Esperiana Memoir, Volume 8: The Lepidoptera fauna of a Crater Valley in the Great Escarpment of South Africa The Asante Sana Project

About this book

The present book is the first part of a report of a research project on the Lepidoptera fauna of the private game farm Asante Sana. The farm is situated on the southern margin of the Sneeuberg Mountain Complex of the Great Escarpment in the Eastern Cape, South Africa.

Initially, the entire area of the Sneeuberg Mountains was conceived as the target area of the project. The results of the first excursion were the recognition of a rich but poorly known fauna followed by an appreciation of the need to reduce the research area to a smaller part of the Sneeuberg Mountains. The editors decided to concentrate their field work on Asante Sana, a farm with a rich variety of different habitats lying in an elevational gradient and in the transition zone of two biomes, Karoo and Albany Thicket. They called it the Asante Sana project – a scientific cooperation between the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin and the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, Pretoria. It is essentially an effort to survey and inventory all groups of Lepidoptera. Local inventories are significant and permanent sources of information for taxonomy, biogeography, ecology and conservation. Notwithstanding the taxonomic group they are important contributions to improve our knowledge of biodiversity in South Africa. The herein presented inventory is the first all taxa inventory on Lepidoptera on a local scale in South Africa.

The editors have attempted to involve as many specialists as possible. There are not many with a focus on Africa and on families other than butterflies. All persons asked for collaboration eventually agreed to work up the collected material of their groups. Without the participation of these specialists the inventory of the full spectrum of Lepidoptera would not have been possible.

The present volume includes 26 family chapters which have been submitted by authors until summer 2019. A further 25 chapters will follow with the second part, which will be published one or two years later.

Contents

Foreword (Wolfram Mey)    6
Introduction (Wolfram Mey & Martin Krüger)    7

The vegetation of Asante Sana and the Great Escarpment (V. Ralph Clark  & Joao D. Vidal)    25
Hepialidae (Wolfram Mey)    39
Nepticulidae (Erik J. van Nieukerken)    49
Tischeriidae (Jonas R. Stonis, Arunas Diskus & Wolfram Mey)    85
Cecidosiidae, Adelidae (Wolfram Mey)    99
Eriocottidae (Wolfram Mey & Thomas Sobczyk)    119
 Psychidae (Thomas Sobczyk)    125
Dryadaulidae, Tineidae (Wolfram Mey)    157
Gracillariidae (Paolo Triberti)    177
Bucculatricidae (Wolfram Mey)    189
Yponomeutidae, Plutellidae (David Agassiz)    201
Lyonetiidae, Bedelliidae (Wolfram Mey)    207
Elachistidae (Lauri Kaila)    213
Coleophoridae (Giorgio Baldizzone)    217
Scythrididae (Bengt Å. Bengtsson)    251
Gelechiidae (Oleksiy V. Bidzilya)    257
Carposinidae (Wolfram Mey)    295
Crambinae (Graziano Bassi)    299
Tortricidae (Leif Aarvik)    313
Lacturidae (Wolfram Mey)    349
Cossidae, Metarbelidae (Wolfram Mey)    357
Geometridae (Martin Krüger)    365
Erebidae: Thyritini (Lukasz Przybylowicz)    411
Erebidae: Lithosiinae (Martin Krüger)    415
Erebidae: Nolidae, Noctuidae (Hermann H. Hacker)    428

Index    538

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