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Post by trehopr1 on Mar 3, 2022 1:25:48 GMT -8
I am just curious to know which countries in Africa
have the poorest representation of their butterfly
fauna known to science.
There are a LOT of countries on that continent and
surely a few have been little collected/surveyed for
any number of reasons.
So, if any come to mind please elaborate.
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Post by borearctia on Mar 3, 2022 7:30:40 GMT -8
In my opinion, the Republic of Chad would be a good candidate.
I worked there professionally for 1 year from 2020 to 2021.
Chad has been sparsely collected in the past.
There are few records of entomological research visits but they are almost exclusively concentrated in the Lake Chad region and the border area with Cameroon.
In entomological collections the locality "Chad" is almost not represented.
Despite the partly extreme climate, the species diversity in Chad is quite remarkable.
It can be assumed that there is still much to be discovered. Chad is known for endemic species in flora and fauna.
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Post by nomihoudai on Mar 3, 2022 11:17:01 GMT -8
Right now LepiMap heavily relies on GBIF. Therefore the main data sources are researchers, museums, and citizen scientists. Currently, the African countries with less than 50 species are as follows:
Western Sahara - 4 species.
Burundi - 11 species.
Chad - 12 species.
Libya - 14 species.
Mauritania - 14 species.
Burkina Faso - 16 species.
Somalia - 38 species.
Guinea Bissau - 40 species.
Togo - 48 species.
For me the two most striking cases (without ever having been there) are Burundi and Chad. At least from Burundi I know that the situation in the country is not great, it is one of the main areas where OXFAM UK did charity work. This does not mean that any of these countries (besides those in the Sahara area) have such low diversity.
While there isn't much data coming out of these places recently, I do not agree that the butterfly fauna of Africa is poorly known in any way. Quite a lot of work has been done and there is major books that cover different countries of the continent in great detail.
- Field Guide to Butterflies of South Africa - Woodhall
- Butterflies of Kenya - Larsen
- Butterflies of West Africa - Larsen
- Butterflies of the Afrotropical Region - d'Abrera
- Butterflies of Tanzania - Kielland
- Butterflies of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia - Tennent
- Atlas Illustré des Rhopalocères du Bénin - Coache, Rainon, and Sinzogan.
So, I think there is plenty of knowledge out there. In the next update I will improve my maps from sources that focus more on literature. The species count for Togo should rise to 359 species for example.
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Post by trehopr1 on Mar 3, 2022 12:28:43 GMT -8
Thank you indeed Claude !
Your post was informative and yes, there are some good books out there on the butterfly fauna of Africa.
I just figured over the last 30 or 40 years that there are places there that you never hear of specimens from. Some of course have been war torn or at least uneasy places to be in. Yet others, have been under dictatorships where again survey work either has not existed or has been very limited.
Again, just a question of idle curiosity on my part.
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Post by borearctia on Mar 3, 2022 14:16:27 GMT -8
According to ABDB, 150 species have been recorded for Burundi, 156 for Burkina Faso, and 46 for Chad Source: abdb-africa.org/ |
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Post by africaone on Mar 4, 2022 1:02:59 GMT -8
the question is strange ... what is important the number of known species ? or the degree of knowledge of a country ?
you can't compare the number of species of countries as mauritania, Niger, Tchad or Gambia to countries as Congo, Cameroun, Ghana, etc.
some countries have very few importance in terms of knowledge because their fauna is the same as those of the neighbours.
Public datas are not always reliable. Burundi with 11 is completely crazy and I can say that quite all the fauna of Burundi is known whith hundreds species collected.
The good question in my sense may be "Which country has the greatest potential step forward in terms of percentage of its wildlife?"
Countries are delimitaed by political boundaries not natrual ones. It is also not logic to consider coutries more than ecological regions.
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