Butterflies of Cyprus : A Field Guide and Distribution Atlas (eBook)

Eddie John (Author) A period of residency in Cyprus followed by annual visits enabled Eddie John to study the island's butterflies and to establish the Cyprus Butterfly Recording Scheme. In 2002, he edited (and provided distribution maps for) 'Butterflies of Cyprus' (Makris, 2003; 329 pp. Now out of print ). EJ was the principal editor of an 895-page book, 'Wildlife of Cyprus' (Sparrow & John, 2016) and contributed a 64-page chapter on butterflies. In 2020, he co-authored and edited Vol II of 'Butterflies of the Levant' (Benyamini & John). He has written or co-authored over 50 papers, the majority peer-reviewed. Christodoulos Makris (Author) Christodoulos Makris is a permanent resident of Cyprus. For more than thirty years he has studied, documented and photographed the biodiversity of Cyprus, maintaining an archive of thousands of photographs of the flora and fauna of the island. He is the author of the book 'Butterflies of Cyprus' (Makris, 2003; 329 pp., now out of print) which includes more than 800 of his photographs. He has written or co-authored over 30 papers; the majority published in peer-reviewed journals.

Cyprus is the third-largest island of the Mediterranean Sea, and although it hosts just 56 butterfly species, several of those are endemic due to the peculiar geological history of this island. When I learned about this book, I expected a traditional field guide. However, this book is not merely a comprehensive species checklist but also a precious testament of how evolutionary biologists, entomologists, and conservation biologists work together to understand and safeguard biodiversity.

I loved the book, which mainly consists of short, fluid, and well-written chapters, but I admit that I found the order of the initial eleven chapters funny. I would not recommend this book to someone looking for an easy-to-carry field guide, but every butterfly lover should read it before visiting Cyprus. Some potential buyers may be discouraged by its price, but I found it justified by many beautiful colour photos.

The book is a treasure for butterfly enthusiasts in Cyprus and the Middle East, and a beautiful example of how we can communicate butterfly research to the public. Ecologists and butterfly enthusiasts could only wish for other authors to follow the road paved by this book and produce similar outstanding material covering other islands and regions.

If you are drawn to Cyprus to look for these five butterflies - or indeed any of the other 45 species - then this book will tell you all that you need to know about how to identify them, whereabouts on Cyprus they occur, flight periods, and so forth. You cannot prepare yourself better for your quest than by acquiring this book.

The heart of the book is the 56 species accounts in the section headed 'Presentation of Species'. Also impressive for their thoroughness are the species range maps. The species accounts are comprehensive and include inter alia sections on phenology, larval hostplants, ecology, identification, and conservation status in Cyprus.

I cannot conclude better than by quoting a sentence from the foreword by Dr Martin Wiemers "This book is an amazing step forward which compiles the results of all [previous] efforts into a truly comprehensive piece of work,
with a wealth of information, which is of importance not only to students of the butterflies of Cyprus but also to those of the Western Palearctic region in general."

This expansive tome of nearly 400 pages really becomes the bible for any butterfly hunter wishing to explore the 70 odd species present in Cyprus. Each species has about 4 pages donated to it with photographs of the adults, larvae, host-plant(s) and distribution map. The distribution maps are particularly significant as they give an indication of which species are in decline and which are doing well. Following three pages of Abbreviations, Glossary and Acronyms is an extensive bibliography. There are three indexes: a general one together with those of English and Scientific butterfly names; you can't go wrong. This excellent field guide is a prerequisite to anyone entertaining a butterfly hunting expedition to Cyprus. I would thoroughly recommend this book. With this to hand, one cannot fail to identify any butterfly that you may come across in Cyprus.

This finely produced and profusely illustrated new book presents a wealth of information on the 56 butterfly species currently known to occur, or to have occurred on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus - and a dozen or so others considered more or less likely to colonise the island in the foreseeable future.
A major feature of the book is the inclusion of very clear and informative distribution maps - which reveal some striking differences. Armed with this book, anyone with an interest in the butterflies of Cyprus has the whole of the fauna open to them, to discover, understand and explore.
This comprehensive and authoritative source of available information is a truly excellent addition to the ever-growing number of books about butterflies, for which Eddie John, Christodoulos Makris, the many highly supportive volunteers of the Cyprus Butterfly Study Group and the CABI production team, can all justifiably be very proud.

The book is much more than an illustrative field guide and the presentation of distribution data of butterflies in Cyprus. It consists of 15 chapters that could be considered as separate educational information blocks. Fifty-six species are presented and richly illustrated following a consistent pattern: scientific name, family, vernacular name in English, type locality, illustrations in nature and set specimens, presence in the eastern Mediterranean, distribution in Cyprus with a detailed map of observations, short geographical information if the presented species is a migrant, phenology, larval hostplants with illustrations, ecology and behaviour, comments aiding species identification, diagnostic comments on similar species, and conservation status in Cyprus.

Cyprus is the third-largest island of the Mediterranean Sea, and although it hosts just 56 butterfly species, several of those are endemic due to the peculiar geological history of this island. When I learned about this book, I expected a traditional field guide. However, this book is not merely a comprehensive species checklist but also a precious testament of how evolutionary biologists, entomologists, and conservation biologists work together to understand and safeguard biodiversity. I loved the book, which mainly consists of short, fluid, and well-written chapters.

I would not recommend this book to someone looking for an easy-to-carry field guide, but every butterfly lover should read it before visiting Cyprus. Some potential buyers may be discouraged by its price, but I found it justified by many beautiful colour photos. The book is a treasure for butterfly enthusiasts in Cyprus and the Middle East, and a beautiful example of how we can communicate butterfly research to the public. Ecologists and butterfly enthusiasts could only wish for other authors to follow the
road paved by this book and produce similar outstanding
material covering other islands and regions.