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The tropical habitats, varied topography, and unique biogeographic history of Vietnam have resulted in a diverse fauna, rich in endemics. In this fourth instalment of his series on the Butterflies of Vietnam, Dr Monastyrskii completes species-level descriptions of the brush-footed butterflies, Nymphalidae, by describing and illustrating ten subfamilies: Apaturinae, Biblidinae, Calinaginae, Charaxinae, Cyrestinae, Heliconiine, Libytheinae, Limenitidinae, Nymphalinae, and Pseudergolinae. Most Southeast Asian countries lack comprehensive guides to understanding and identifying their insect fauna, and this volume makes significant progress towards an exhaustive and informative account of Vietnam’s butterflies. The book is based on the author’s decades of field experience and encyclopedic knowledge of the literature (including recent molecular phylogenetic studies) with input from other specialists working in Vietnam.
The species described in this two-part work include some of the most obscure (Calinaga in Calinaginae), common (in Nymphalinae and Limenitidinae), and biologically interesting species in Southeast Asia (e .g., the sexually dimorphic Batesian mimic Euripus nyctelius in Apaturinae, in which various female forms resemble different Euploea model species). Images and habitat information on the country’s 120 known species of Limenitidinae are particularly valuable, as many of these taxa are remarkably similar, making them difficult to discriminate. This is the first and only resource for identifying the diverse assemblage of Limenitidinae species found in Vietnam and neighbouring areas.
