When I first came out here to GVI Kenya in July 2008, I never thought I would become an avid fan of butterflies.  To be honest, I would have laughed at the thought (as would many of my friends back home in England!), but I now proud to say otherwise.

As part of our biodiversity research in Shimoni east forest, we monitor butterfly diversity and abundance.  We are trying to put together a comprehensive species list, as well as record any changes in species presence, distribution, or changes in abundance.  We do this for several reasons. 

Charaxes brutus.  Here you can see its proboscis very well (the curly red thing) which is used for feeding.

Firstly, butterflies are a very well studied taxon.  They are also easily identifiable (they are 90% identifiable by external characteristics), and we can do it ourselves relatively accurately using a book (Larsen 2006).  They are also excellent ecological indicators due to their very specific plant and habitat associations.  So by monitoring them, we can indirectly monitor the health of the forest. 

 Charaxes brutus

And finally, they have a trait that plays straight into our hands.  They can only take off upwards.  This means they are very easy to trap!  We use things called canopy traps, which comprise of a board with a pot of bait in the middle.  A couple of inches above the board is a cylindrical tube of mosquito netting.  So the butterflies fly onto the board to feed on the bait, then when they attempt to fly away, they fly straight into the net!

The face of Charaxes brutus

Once caught, we remove them from the net, and take photographs of the upperside and the underside for later identification.  Getting them out of the trap is fairly easy.  You grab them by the sides of the thorax, which is the middle section that houses all of the muscles for the legs and wings.  You can then use your other hand to slide your finger between the wings and get a grip of the thorax from the top and bottom.  The butterflies we catch in the traps tend to be the larger species, and they are very strong!  It still surprises me how solid their thorax is, and the strength of their wings.  By using this method, we can be sure not to touch their wings or harm the butterfly.  Once photographed, we let them fly on their way.  An example of the grip we get is shown below.

Papilio demodocus demodocus

I decided to write this blog because Andy (a new edition to GVI) has a camera with an amazing macro setting, allowing us to get some really cool photos of the butterflies.  Enjoy the close ups!