South Africa's very first Butterfly Census Weekend (BCW) will take place on the weekend of 24-25 April 2010, as part of the SABCA project. Anyone can participate - there will be beginner and expert categories. You will need to register your team and locality. It is hoped that this event becomes a regular annual or binnual event, collecting important information which can be used to monitor our butterflies over time and to help us understand the impacts of land use and climate change. Please read all the information below, including the rules, before registering your team.
(Acknowledgements: Members of LepSoc helped plan this event)
Categories
Beginner:
You are only just getting to know your butterflies, or would like to start now.
Only common butterflies seen within your registered locality are to be noted. Lists/pamphlets of the ~50 common butterflies in each province are available to assist you in the field. Please click the "Provincial pamphlets/lists" button below to access these.
Photos of difficult/uncommon species must be submitted to the online Virtual Museum for expert identification.
Expert:
You are an experienced member of the Lepidopterists' Society of Africa.
All butterfly species seen within the registered locality are to be noted.
Locality definition
Anywhere in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland included.
A locality may be your garden, a park, farm, nature reserve, etc.
The aim of the BCW is to collect data from the same particular locality over time, so that long-term trends of butterflies in that locality can be monitored and the data used towards understanding the impacts of land use and climate change. Therefore, the locality must not be too large, so as to ensure that a thorough census can be conducted and so that the census can be easily repeated in the same locality during future annual or biannual BCW's.
To this end, we strongly recommend that the locality censused should have a radius no greater than 1km around its centre point. However, you may census a larger locality, but please no larger than a radius of about 12km around the centre point. The radius around the centre point of your locality must be noted in the registration and data capture forms.
Census all habitat types within your chosen locality. If your locality is large, you may consider walking line transects through your locality, to cover all habitat types, and census butterflies along your transects.
Map out your locality on a map or Google Earth before the time, so that you are familiar with the boundaries and are sure that all areas within the locality will be accessible to you. If possible, print out the map to take with you during the census.
Rules
To participate in the BCW, you need to register your team and locality with the SABCA project. Registration is free. Registration closes 23 April 2010. To register, please click the "Registration" button below.
Teams should preferably consist of 3-4 people (However, teams of one or two people are acceptable). Schools may register teams of up to 10 people. At least one person per team must be an adult. Team members are those who significantly contribute to the census. Those who do not significantly contribute to the census (e.g. small children) cannot be considered as team members.
A minimum of two uninterrupted, consecutive hours must be spent in the registered locality on any day of the BCW (24 and 25 April). In total, a minimum of six hours must be spent in the registered locality during the BCW (e.g. three hours on Saturday and three hours on Sunday, or four hours on Saturday and two hours on Sunday, or six hours on Saturday and zero hours on Sunday, or five hours on Saturday and four hours on Sunday).
There may not be more than two Observation Sessions on any day. Each Observation Session must be a minimum of two uninterrupted, consecutive hours.
Please make use of the supplied data capture form to capture data during the census. Print a copy of the form for use in the field. Your data will then be transcribed to the online data submission form. To download the form, click the "Data capture form" button below.
Note the butterflies seen in your registered locality and note the time a particular species is first seen during an Observation Session (Beginners: only the listed ~50 common species. Experts: all butterfly species). Remember to also take note of the start and end time of each Observation Session.
Take note of the maximum numbers of each butterfly species seen during an observation session (there are four categories to choose from): Scarce (1-3), Few (4-6), Plenty (7-15), Common (more than 15).
At least two people in the team must agree with the identification of a butterfly.
Lists/pamphlets of the ~50 common species in each province, for the Beginner category, will be available as pdfs (to access these please click the "Provincial pamphlets/lists" button below). You should print and laminate a colour copy of the relevant pamphlet, for use during the census. Alternatively (strongly recommended), you may print a list of the butterflies and purchase a copy of the excellent butterfly field guide from your local book store: "Field Guide to Butterflies of South Africa." by Steve Woodhall (2005, Struik, Cape Town). Either the pamphlet or the field guide must accompany Beginner teams.
Beginners may take photos of butterflies to help with their identification. Photos can be inspected closely with the pamphlet or field guide at home to help with the ID.
If the ID of a particular butterfly is unclear or is not on your list of common butterflies, then submit its photo to SABCA's online virtual museum (instructions for submitting photos to the virtual museum are here: http://sabca.adu.org.za/public.php). Remember to add in the Notes section of your VM submission, that your submission is for the BCW so that we can easily trace it.
Beginners and people not part of the SABCA Field Survey Team may not collect butterflies. Only accredited members of the Lepidopterists' Society of Africa who are part of SABCA's Field Survey Team, and thus have the relevant collecting permits, may collect butterflies.
All data must be submitted online through the SABCA website, within two weeks after the BCW, i.e. by 9 May 2010. No paper submissions will be accepted. The team leader is responsible for submitting the data to SABCA. To submit your data online, please click the "Online data submission" button below.
The top three winning teams in each category will be announced on the SABCA website.
Censuses may be conducted in the registered locality outside of the BCW period (e.g. monthly or seasonally) and data submitted online. This data will be used to monitor monthly or seasonal trends. The same rules apply here as for the BCW.
You may practice doing a count before the BCW.
This 1st BCW is experimental and will guide future BCW's. We will value your feedback (positive and negative, how it can be improved). Your may send us your feedback in the space provided when submitting your data online.
If you have any queries or problems, please send an email to: sabca@adu.org.za
