Well here it is - the big day has arrived! Carlos Mancina and his editorial team Rayner Núñez and Betina Neyra along with many other writers and contributors have been working very hard on this for quite a while and the result is a fantastic achievement and the first of its kind for Cuba. Its purpose is to raise awareness and the knowledge base in the Cuban population and so is a not for profit publication. You can download a pdf copy here. It is about 17Mb. So exciting and it will create a huge surge of interest that I'm sure will quickly lead to new discoveries.
It is a huge leap forward on what has gone before and great to see such a high quality of photos from many of the great local photographers.
Who will be the first to photograph Great King Anetia pantherata in the wild in Cuba? and to discover its foodplant and photograph its larvae? I had the breath-taking privilege to watch an adult fly past me at close range on 23 June 2015 at Guanahacabibes and would love to go back and see it again- and photograph it!
Who will be the first to find and photograph the larvae of Holguin Skipper Holguinia holguin?
And will Cuban Purplewing Eunica heraclitus be rediscovered or is it really extinct?
I expect the first two of these challenges will be achieved in the fairly near future but the latter is a very long shot as it has been more than a century since one was seen and Cuba has changed a lot in that time.
And what will be the next in this new series of Guías de Campo? I don't know but there are lots of candidates - mammals, reptiles, dragonflies and amphibians. And the great thing about doing them as pdf's means that they can be updated and reissued regularly at hardly any cost as new knowledge is gained.
And finally I would also like to say a big thank you to Luis Roberto Hernández because he was the forerunner of this with his book in 2004. A lot of things have changed since then and much knowledge has been gained by some great science being done on the island, not least that a further 14 species of Calisto have been discovered. His book and the fact that it was unavailable in Cuba was the catalyst to the creation of this website which was done partly so that the Cuban people could access information on butterflies as internet access became more readily available. That went well until my host provider, which I hadn't realised at the time was a US company, decided that Cuba was a security threat and banned access from Cuba in 2018. Hopefully now that the criminal occupant of the White House is on his way out then things might change in the not too distant future.
It is a huge leap forward on what has gone before and great to see such a high quality of photos from many of the great local photographers.
Who will be the first to photograph Great King Anetia pantherata in the wild in Cuba? and to discover its foodplant and photograph its larvae? I had the breath-taking privilege to watch an adult fly past me at close range on 23 June 2015 at Guanahacabibes and would love to go back and see it again- and photograph it!
Who will be the first to find and photograph the larvae of Holguin Skipper Holguinia holguin?
And will Cuban Purplewing Eunica heraclitus be rediscovered or is it really extinct?
I expect the first two of these challenges will be achieved in the fairly near future but the latter is a very long shot as it has been more than a century since one was seen and Cuba has changed a lot in that time.
And what will be the next in this new series of Guías de Campo? I don't know but there are lots of candidates - mammals, reptiles, dragonflies and amphibians. And the great thing about doing them as pdf's means that they can be updated and reissued regularly at hardly any cost as new knowledge is gained.
And finally I would also like to say a big thank you to Luis Roberto Hernández because he was the forerunner of this with his book in 2004. A lot of things have changed since then and much knowledge has been gained by some great science being done on the island, not least that a further 14 species of Calisto have been discovered. His book and the fact that it was unavailable in Cuba was the catalyst to the creation of this website which was done partly so that the Cuban people could access information on butterflies as internet access became more readily available. That went well until my host provider, which I hadn't realised at the time was a US company, decided that Cuba was a security threat and banned access from Cuba in 2018. Hopefully now that the criminal occupant of the White House is on his way out then things might change in the not too distant future.
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