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    • Book of the Month Series
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Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts tagged with lepidoptera

Blog Reel, Featured Books

The Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera: A Story of Pirate Publishers, ISSN Hijacking and Fraudulent DOI Assignment

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In 2017, The Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera published its final issue. The journal’s website was turned off and, to ensure ongoing access to the biodiversity knowledge contained within its articles, all volumes (1-49) were made freely available on BHL. The final editorial, entitled “JRL R.I.P.” was written by Rudolf H. T. Mattoni, the then President of the Lepidoptera Research Foundation. You can find it on BHL here.

Jump forward five years. On 4 January 2022, Scott Miller (@PNGmoths) tweeted about the sad passing of his friend Rudolf H. T. Mattoni (1927-2022). Miller’s tweet prompted the realisation (by Roderic Page) that a “bad actor” had resurrected the Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera website and had been using the journal’s title and ISSN to publish new articles. From 2018 onward, the fraudulent party published 262 articles in six issues across two volumes. These articles were not about lepidoptera (butterflies and moths); they covered a seemingly random array of topics, including economics, health, and business management.

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October 11, 2022byNicole Kearney
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Two Hand-Painted Volumes of Coleoptera Illustrated by Francis du Boulay

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Earlier this year Dr. Simon Leslie, Francis Houssemayne du Boulay’s great-grandson, contacted Melbourne Museum about accessing du Boulay’s hand-painted Coleoptera volumes, held in the Museums Victoria Archives. Dr. Leslie and family accessed the physical volumes in February 2020. While I carefully supervised flipping through the pages of these volumes, I was intrigued by their aesthetic, and scientific and historic, value. Since then, the volumes have been digitised by Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) Australia.

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September 24, 2020byNik McGrath
Blog Reel, Featured Books

An Annotated Copy of Butterflies of Australia by Waterhouse and Lyell (1914)

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Published in 1914, Butterflies of Australia by Gustavus Athol Waterhouse and George Lyell was the first comprehensive work on Australian butterflies to appear in Western scientific literature. It is a thick and rather chunky volume, with descriptions of 332 butterfly species, and was the product of many years of research. The copy held in Museums Victoria’s Rare Book Collection is even thicker than a standard issue, as it is bound with lined pages interleaved throughout. It is an author’s copy, owned and annotated by George Lyell.

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February 27, 2020byHayley Webster
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Her Natural History

General Instructions for Rearing Silkworms: Louise Rienzi and California’s Silk Industry

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When Louise Rienzi wrote her guide on General Instructions for Rearing Silkworms, in 1887, she was part of a movement attempting to establish a viable silk industry for the United States. The epicenter of the new industry was California, where Louis Prevost, a French botanist, was the first to grow silkworms and produce cocoons, in 1860. The physical environment was favorable, and the industry saw some success before it eventually faded.

Several groups were formed to promote the industry, including the State Board of Silk Culture in San Jose. This organization was responsible for printing and distributing Louise Rienzi’s sericultural manual in the late 1880s. Louise Rienzi also served as Secretary of the State Board and issued official reports on the monthly and annual meetings as well as the contributions of various committees, such as the Committee on Mulberry Trees, Eggs and Cocoons.

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March 25, 2019byAlison Kelly and Tomoko Steen
Blog Reel, User Stories

19th Century Butterflies: Reconstructing a Collection’s History with BHL

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The Naturalis Biodiversity Center, a recent BHL Affiliate, is home to one of the largest natural history collections in the world, consisting of over 37 million specimens. Additionally, Naturalis has contributed nearly 200,000 pages to the BHL collection since 2016. Over 900,000 of the museum’s 37+ million specimens are butterflies, some dating back to the 18th century.
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March 9, 2017byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, User Stories

The Australian Lepidoptera Heritage

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Have you ever stumbled across a caterpillar and wondered what kind of adult moth or butterfly it would metamorphose into? Short of catching the caterpillar and actually observing what adult it becomes, this answer might be harder to come by than you might think. Most taxonomy and identification has been performed on the adults of various Lepidopteran species, and there are still many species whose caterpillar forms are not readily known. This is particularly true for many Australian species whose early life stages remain a scientific mystery.

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November 12, 2015byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Using Art to Document Species: Cramer and the Lepidoptera

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How could you make a visual record of a collection before the advent of photography? Through illustrations, of course. It was a desire to produce just such a record that prompted the creation of the magnificent plates accompanying De uitlandsche kapellen voorkomende in de drie waereld-deelen, Asia, Africa en America ([1775]-1782), by Pieter Cramer, which has been digitized for BHL by Mann Library, Cornell University. Pieter Cramer was a wealthy linen and wool merchant from Amsterdam. Born in 1721, he had a keen interest in natural history – particularly Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths).
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November 5, 2015byGrace Costantino
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