Vincent is now gradually finalizing his first “big manuscript” analyzing biodiversity of butterflies and moths along the altitudinal gradient of Mount Cameroon. During this process, he has also counted and quantified some values evidencing the huge effort we have invested into the project. Here are some of them: Altogether, fruit-feeding Lepidoptera were sampled during 16,800 trap/days, whilst night active moths were collected during 126 full nights, i.e. 1,512 hours of active collecting of moths attracted by light. For the traps baiting, we have used over 4 tons of bananas. The generators (altogether, we have used 7 generators, from which 4 have already malfunctioned) running the lights consumed over 1,000 liters of petrol. This effort has brought 42,816 specimens identified to 1,112 species; these numbers will substantially grow once the sampled geometrids will be processed as well. The question how much rice and Lion d’Or whiskey have been consumed will most probably remain unanswered.
“Our” part of the Lepidoptera collection in Krakow which is already completely full of our material from Mount Cameroon. © S. Delabye