Meridionak a Lepidopterist in Birdwing Paradise.
Sept 26, 2018 10:17:04 GMT
deliasfanatic, mygos, and 4 more like this
Post by nomad on Sept 26, 2018 10:17:04 GMT
Meridionak a Lepidopterist in Birdwing Paradise.
" When I turned around, the male meridionalis birdwing fluttered in front of me, its brilliant iridescent golden wings glittering like a living gem. After a few moments of dazzling display, it then darted away and disappeared into the undergrowth like some kind of jungle fairy creature. It left me there partly stunned and quite immobilized for some moments, so great was the thrill and excitement of this encounter." Jan Pasternak (2000) Fluttering Encounters in the Amazing Archipelago.
This article commemorates the late lepidopterist Jan Pasternak who spent much of his life among the birdwing and other butterflies that he loved. Certainly he collected specimens, but he was also interested in studying and photographing the biology of the birdwings, often on remote mountains or in steaming lowland rainforests. He was a witness to the destruction of the lowland rainforest in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere, becoming increasingly concerned about the plight of the birdwing butterflies and the survival of these magnificent creatures. Much more about this outstanding field lepidopterist together with many of his colour photographs of birdwings and other butterflies of Papua and West New Guinea, Java and Sulawesi can be found in Jan's highly interesting book Fluttering Encounters in the Amazing Archipelago (2000). This was followed with additional information and photographs in his CD Rom A Naturalist in Birdwing Paradise.
Jan Pasternak was born in 1948 among the Carpathian Mountains in Moravia in Czechoslovakia. His interest in butterflies started early in his childhood and one winter's evening, Jan was reading Brehms Tierleben (Brehms Animal Life) when he saw the magnificent birdwing butterflies in colour for the first time, from then on he was determined to travel to the remote far eastern jungles where these glorious creatures are found.
Plate from Brehms Tierleben vol 9 (1900) with Ornithoptera (priamus) richmondia and Troides Minos. Our interest is often sparked into life during childhood by something we see in a book.
After several failed attempts, in 1969 Jan succeeded in escaping to Austria from the oppressive communist regime of his native Czechoslovakia. The following year he emigrated to Australia and in February 1970 he arrived in Papua New Guinea, where he met with the lepidopterist Ray Straatman who affectionately became known as the Birdwing Guru. Straatman worked as a manager on a rubber plantation near the Veimauri River and he helped Jan get a job on a rubber plantation as an assistant manager. Jan's first forays into the rainforest were in the Brown, Vanapa, Kuriva, and Veimauri River regions, when he was often accompanied by his mentor Straatman. Here he saw for the first time Ornithoptera priamus poseidon and Straatman showed Jan the hostplant of Ornithoptera meridionalis. During one solo visit to the Brown River area Jan saw a male of what would become his favourite birdwing, the tailed O. meridionalis, an encounter he vividly describes in his book. By the mid-1970s the lowland rainforest habitat of O. meridionalis and others birdwings found in this region had been mostly destroyed by logging companies and by the early 1980s little remained of this once vast tract of lowland forest.
Jan writes pers comm " Meridionalis was (and still is my favourite birdwing) and it took me years of field study to know something of its biology, meridionalis is highly sensitive to any habitat disturbance, even selective logging. The butterfly will not keep dwelling nor breeding in any disturbed forest habitat and shall leave not to return again. Unlike other birdwings, meridionalis can be observed in tree canopy only on rare occasions, and only when its favourite tree is in blossom. Normally, most of the time they occupy the lower levels of the forest closer to ground. The males spend much of their time at repose resting and do not like flying very much. When they do, flight seems clumsy and somewhat under strain. I devoted much more time to this mystical birdwing than I did to other birdwings. Even Ray used to joke about my preoccupation with meridionalis and used to call me by nicknames 'Meridionak' or 'Pasternalis'." It seems there was a certain amount of controversy who actually discovered the early stages of O. Meridionalis. Jan writes pers comm " I know Jan Haugum in his Monograph has Ray discovering the early stages of meridionalis in Milne Bay in 1963 but I'm not sure about this and think it is an error. It is true that in 1963 the early stages of meridionalis were discovered in Brown River but the very first person who found them there was Henry Rauber, a Swiss collector who was working and living in Port Moresby. Richard Carver found them there a bit later (probably in the same year). As far as I can recall Ray has spent a lot of time in Milne Bay in 1967-68 and got specimens of meridionalis from there."
In 1971 during a visit to the Omeri Mountains in the Central Province, Papua New Guinea Jan saw Ornithoptera chimaera flying high over the montaine rainforest, and on an unknown Aristolochia found some ova of this birdwing. During 1972 in the Bundi area of Bismarck Ranges he found the first known larva of Ornithoptera goliath on a then unknown Aristolochia vine and later the first larva of O. chimaera in various stages. Here there was a strong population of O. chimaera and Jan had the wonderful experience of watching many of these birdwings flying around a blossom tree near Mount Wilhelm. Later when the news spread of this wonderful area for O. chimaera, Ray Straatman, Harry Borch and Richard Carver accompanied by Bernard D' Abrera, all followed in Jan's footsteps. Jan did not publish his discoveries of the early stages of O. goliath and O. chimaera, this was done by Straatman and F. Schmid in 1975 after they successfully bred both species. Jan writes pers comm "Unfortunately in the past I didn't get much credit for my work. Whether it was for my discovery of the early stages of chimaera and goliath or for my painstaking research of meridionalis biology/ecology".
As in all things there was a certain amount of rivalry among the New Guinea birdwing field men, Jan writing per comm of Ray Straatman "I met Ray soon after I arrived in Papua New Guinea in 1970. In the beginning he was my mentor and it was him who took me for the first time to Brown, Vanapa and Kuriva Rivers and showed me the host plant of O. meridionalis, for which I was very grateful to him (I later paid him back by showing him the host plants of O. chimaera and O. goliath). Gradually we became friends, although there were times when some rivalry appeared between us, especially my discovery of the early stages of O. chimaera in 1971 and O. goliath in 1972, or through my study of biology and peculiar mating habits of O. meridionalis. Ray certainly was a great lepidopterist and also a remarkable man. Indeed he was one of the first to thoroughly study the biology of Ornithoptera, especially that of O. alexandrae." In 1973 Jan went to Popondetta and was able to observe and photograph the early stages and adults of O. alexandrae, how different from today when all the rainforest in that area has been logged and turned into oil palm plantations and when one has to travel to remote villages in dangerous country, invested with rascal gangs to see the world's largest butterfly. Jan writing pers comm " I got the report from 2011 (when I was in Cairns) that a small group of American lepidopterists was robbed at gun point near Popondetta when they wanted to see and photograph/video alexandrae. They were robbed and stripped of all their belongings (even clothes) and were lucky to stay alive!! Yet the Police was stationed nearby but didn't do anything! So no birdwing (not even alexandrae) is worth taking such risks!"
In 1976 Jan travelled to the Arfak Mountains in the then Irian Jaya, now known as West Papua, he was able to see for himself the high concentration of birdwings that are found there, including Ornithoptera Rothschildi that is found nowhere else. Jan was critical of the WWF butterfly farming that was set up among the Arfak Hatam people, stating that in the end it brought them little benefit, writing " Unfortunately, they have been the victims of exploitation by many unscrupulous dealers & agencies, being paid ridiculously very little for each birdwing pupa or adult specimen, while the other party was reaping all the profits for their hard work!"
O.meridionalis tarunggarensis was only known by two female specimens that were collected during 1921 by the Pratt brothers in the Weyland Mountains. Jan was determined to rediscover this taxon in West Papua. In 1978 he arrived at Kamrau Bay and proceeded up the Uruma River and then trekked overland towards Lake Yarmur in the foothills west of the Weyland Mountains. After an exhaustive search he finally found the host plant of O. meridionalis with larvae, which he photographed together with the emerging imagoes. This exciting discovery was published in his 1981 paper, On the rediscovery of Ornithoptera meridionalis tarunggarensis Joicey & Talbot in a new locality in Kamrau Bay, south-west Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Transactions of the Himeji Natural History Association 1981 : 2-14.
During the 1978 field trip at 100 meters Jan caught a remarkable specimen of Ornithoptera paradisea flavescens where the green iridescence covered the entire forewing. At that time it was not known if this was a typical specimen of the O. paradisea population occurring in the Lake Yamur area, but is now recognized as an extreme and rare aberration of that species that Deslisle (2012) named f. jeanpierrei. In this area Jan also observed O. goliath and O. tithonus and he took an usual female specimen of the latter. Jan's remarkable O. Paradisea aberration was sold to a Japanese collector (Pasternak pers comm).
Ornithoptera paradisea flavescens f. jeanpierrei. Lake Yamur, West Paupa,1978.
Female specimen of Ornithoptera tithonus with much reduced forewing markings. Lake Yamur 1978. Ex Pasternak collection.
Jan Pastenak Cairns, 1979, with his O. paradisea specimens.
Jan recorded that he returned to the Lake Yamur region in 1979 & 1980. During the 1980 expedition he collected ova of O. meridionalis at 700 m = 2,100 feet that emerged in July 1981, producing three males and one female but unfortunately they did not enclose properly. Jan regarded these specimens of O. meridionalis from the highlands of Lake Yamur as distinct from those in the lowland rainforest of Kamrau Bay, the differences which he outlined in his paper published in Papilio International (1986) Western Ornithoptera (Schoenbergia) meridionalis two forms of subspecies tarunggarensis. Jan writes pers comm " In my opinion this highland meridionalis is not just a local form but could represent an entirely a new race. It does not only have the different cubital pattern and increased iridescence of the forewing but also the shape and the structure of the hindwing and the tail is quite different than in other lowland forms of meridionalis." This golden highland form of O. meridionalis was named in honour of Jan in Outstanding Birdwings Butterflies, p.663 as f. pasternaki by Deslisle and Sclavo (2015), together with an illustration of the holotype specimen which is in the collection of Dr. Takashi Ohya. Jan writing per comm " A pair was given to Jan Haugum and 2 males ended up in Japan."
A photograph of O. meridionalis f. pasternaki collected by Jan Pasternak, image by Ray Straatman with notes.
In 1980 Jan set off on an expedition to the Torricelli Mountains, East Sepik PNG and to the remote Bewani Mountains on the border with West Papua. Here Jan found the adults and early stages of both O. goliath supremus and O. paradisea borchi. Some males of O. goliath supremus from the Bewani Mountains were extremely golden and are probably referable to f. aurata Rousseau-Decelle 1935.
O. goliath supremus f. aurata Rousseau-Decelle 1935. Bewani Mountains, Papua New Guinea 1980. Ex Pasternak Collection.
In 1981 Jan travelled to the Buin area of South Bougainville to observe the adults and early stages of O. victoriae and O.priamus urvillianus. By this time Jan was living in Cairns, he was able to observe both O. priamus euphorion and O. priamus richmondia, these have been previously regarding as subspecies of O. priamus but several authors including Jan regarded them as distinct species.
Jan was interested in many other butterflies and his observations and high quality photographs of these that were found during his travels in Java (1976, 1985 and subsequent visits) and to Sulawesi (1985 & 1987) were published in Fluttering Encounters in the Amazing Archipelago (2000). Jan was probably the last person to observe Papilio lampsacus on Java, however in spite of this butterfly not been seen for many years Jan was convinced it was not extinct, writing in pers comm " P. lampsacus is not extinct. It survives in at least one locality on Gunung Salak and possibly on G. Gede as well. But on G. Salak it has a better chance to survive because this mountain has a very rough and hard to access terrain with very steep and heavily forested slopes. Furthermore, it is a highly protected area and nobody is allowed to enter it without a special and hard to obtain permit. G. Salak is also the only known locality in West Java where Atroph. sycorax was found. In 1994 I went to G. Salak in order to find and photograph A. sycorax for my book (Fluttering Encounters...) but had no luck. But I saw a glimpse of P. lampsacus as it sped past me and quickly disappeared up the slope in thick forest foliage! Actually, P. lampsacus was not a rare butterfly in the former times neither was it a strictly highland species. When there was still some low to medium elevation rainforest left in West Java in the past, especially around Bogor, many specimens of lampsacus were collected by the colonial Dutch collectors. Up to about the early 1960's this butterfly could often be spotted in the world famous Bogor Botanic Gardens as some specimens were straying there from the nearby forest. As gradually the low to medium rainforest had been chopped down and disappeared many of the Javanese butterflies were pushed and forced to adapt to the highland montane forest habitat, the phenomenon which I describe in my book (chapter, Focus on Java). P. lampsacus is strictly endemic to West Java and has never been found further east in Central or East Java. Same goes for another species, Atrophaneura luchti, which is strictly endemic to two mountain ranges in East Java, G. Argopuro and Ijen."
It was during his visits to the little explored Yapen Island in West Papua during 1991 & 1994 that Jan considered he had found what he called the " Butterfly Paradise Island". Yapen had been little explored entomologically because of its rugged rainforest interior with high mountains rising to 1500 meters. During his visit he was the first to find Papilio laglaizei on Yapen which he considered to be a distinct subspecies. O. priamus and O. goliath f.loc ukihidei Hanafusa 1994 had been found on Yapen in the early 1990s and Jan was convinced that other species of Ornithoptera occurred there, and in this he was proved correct when during his 1994 expedition he observed two species of Ornithoptera that had previously been unrecorded from the island, writing in 2000 " Flying high and feeding on the flowers of that rainforest giant were many birdwings of not only O.priamus & O.goliath but also of a new (and to my knowledge to this day, not described as yet) subspecies O.paradisea & O.tithonus. I stayed there for hours, watching that wonderful spectacle in a complete amazement & excitement, not being able to do much else. That was as close as a lepidopterist can get to paradise!" Frustratingly he was unable to capture the Yapen O.paradisea & O.tithonus but these were described from material collected by dealers as O. tithonus f.loc elisabethae Dufek & Schaffler 2006 and O.paradisea arfakensis f. loc fernandi Deslisle and Scavo 2012. Jan was rightly suspicious of birdwing butterflies from new localities writing in per comm "One has to be very cautious because the specimens collected by Indonesian catchers/suppliers bear very unreliable data and their location origin is very doubtful. These people often give false or misleading data in order to 'create' new forms or spp from new locations to get much higher prices for them! "
Jan per comm gave further information on the Islands near Yapen "Biak has absolutely unsuitable habitat for Schoenbergia. The soil is very poor & dry and the whole island consists of coral reef rocks. Supiori Island yes, there is Schoenbergia, this island has a different topography and soil structure than Biak. In 1990's I sent my faithful Irianese field assistants from Yapen to explore Waar and Numfoor Islands. They reported these islands were almost devoid of forest and certainly no Schoenbergia there, only priamus."
Jan finally returned to his native Czechoslovakia, where he spent his last days of an exciting life well spent among the butterflies he loved.
Jan Pasternak (sitting left) with Jan Haugum (sitting on the right), Ray Straatman (standing right) and Rieng de Jong (left) at Rijeks Natural History Museum in Leiden, Netherlands, October 1981.
* The images in the article was used with written permission of Jan Pasternak (2013) and those images he sent to Jacques Porteneuve, were very kindly provided by him.
In Memoriam of Jan Pasternak 1948-2013.
" When I turned around, the male meridionalis birdwing fluttered in front of me, its brilliant iridescent golden wings glittering like a living gem. After a few moments of dazzling display, it then darted away and disappeared into the undergrowth like some kind of jungle fairy creature. It left me there partly stunned and quite immobilized for some moments, so great was the thrill and excitement of this encounter." Jan Pasternak (2000) Fluttering Encounters in the Amazing Archipelago.
This article commemorates the late lepidopterist Jan Pasternak who spent much of his life among the birdwing and other butterflies that he loved. Certainly he collected specimens, but he was also interested in studying and photographing the biology of the birdwings, often on remote mountains or in steaming lowland rainforests. He was a witness to the destruction of the lowland rainforest in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere, becoming increasingly concerned about the plight of the birdwing butterflies and the survival of these magnificent creatures. Much more about this outstanding field lepidopterist together with many of his colour photographs of birdwings and other butterflies of Papua and West New Guinea, Java and Sulawesi can be found in Jan's highly interesting book Fluttering Encounters in the Amazing Archipelago (2000). This was followed with additional information and photographs in his CD Rom A Naturalist in Birdwing Paradise.
Jan Pasternak was born in 1948 among the Carpathian Mountains in Moravia in Czechoslovakia. His interest in butterflies started early in his childhood and one winter's evening, Jan was reading Brehms Tierleben (Brehms Animal Life) when he saw the magnificent birdwing butterflies in colour for the first time, from then on he was determined to travel to the remote far eastern jungles where these glorious creatures are found.
Plate from Brehms Tierleben vol 9 (1900) with Ornithoptera (priamus) richmondia and Troides Minos. Our interest is often sparked into life during childhood by something we see in a book.
After several failed attempts, in 1969 Jan succeeded in escaping to Austria from the oppressive communist regime of his native Czechoslovakia. The following year he emigrated to Australia and in February 1970 he arrived in Papua New Guinea, where he met with the lepidopterist Ray Straatman who affectionately became known as the Birdwing Guru. Straatman worked as a manager on a rubber plantation near the Veimauri River and he helped Jan get a job on a rubber plantation as an assistant manager. Jan's first forays into the rainforest were in the Brown, Vanapa, Kuriva, and Veimauri River regions, when he was often accompanied by his mentor Straatman. Here he saw for the first time Ornithoptera priamus poseidon and Straatman showed Jan the hostplant of Ornithoptera meridionalis. During one solo visit to the Brown River area Jan saw a male of what would become his favourite birdwing, the tailed O. meridionalis, an encounter he vividly describes in his book. By the mid-1970s the lowland rainforest habitat of O. meridionalis and others birdwings found in this region had been mostly destroyed by logging companies and by the early 1980s little remained of this once vast tract of lowland forest.
Jan writes pers comm " Meridionalis was (and still is my favourite birdwing) and it took me years of field study to know something of its biology, meridionalis is highly sensitive to any habitat disturbance, even selective logging. The butterfly will not keep dwelling nor breeding in any disturbed forest habitat and shall leave not to return again. Unlike other birdwings, meridionalis can be observed in tree canopy only on rare occasions, and only when its favourite tree is in blossom. Normally, most of the time they occupy the lower levels of the forest closer to ground. The males spend much of their time at repose resting and do not like flying very much. When they do, flight seems clumsy and somewhat under strain. I devoted much more time to this mystical birdwing than I did to other birdwings. Even Ray used to joke about my preoccupation with meridionalis and used to call me by nicknames 'Meridionak' or 'Pasternalis'." It seems there was a certain amount of controversy who actually discovered the early stages of O. Meridionalis. Jan writes pers comm " I know Jan Haugum in his Monograph has Ray discovering the early stages of meridionalis in Milne Bay in 1963 but I'm not sure about this and think it is an error. It is true that in 1963 the early stages of meridionalis were discovered in Brown River but the very first person who found them there was Henry Rauber, a Swiss collector who was working and living in Port Moresby. Richard Carver found them there a bit later (probably in the same year). As far as I can recall Ray has spent a lot of time in Milne Bay in 1967-68 and got specimens of meridionalis from there."
In 1971 during a visit to the Omeri Mountains in the Central Province, Papua New Guinea Jan saw Ornithoptera chimaera flying high over the montaine rainforest, and on an unknown Aristolochia found some ova of this birdwing. During 1972 in the Bundi area of Bismarck Ranges he found the first known larva of Ornithoptera goliath on a then unknown Aristolochia vine and later the first larva of O. chimaera in various stages. Here there was a strong population of O. chimaera and Jan had the wonderful experience of watching many of these birdwings flying around a blossom tree near Mount Wilhelm. Later when the news spread of this wonderful area for O. chimaera, Ray Straatman, Harry Borch and Richard Carver accompanied by Bernard D' Abrera, all followed in Jan's footsteps. Jan did not publish his discoveries of the early stages of O. goliath and O. chimaera, this was done by Straatman and F. Schmid in 1975 after they successfully bred both species. Jan writes pers comm "Unfortunately in the past I didn't get much credit for my work. Whether it was for my discovery of the early stages of chimaera and goliath or for my painstaking research of meridionalis biology/ecology".
As in all things there was a certain amount of rivalry among the New Guinea birdwing field men, Jan writing per comm of Ray Straatman "I met Ray soon after I arrived in Papua New Guinea in 1970. In the beginning he was my mentor and it was him who took me for the first time to Brown, Vanapa and Kuriva Rivers and showed me the host plant of O. meridionalis, for which I was very grateful to him (I later paid him back by showing him the host plants of O. chimaera and O. goliath). Gradually we became friends, although there were times when some rivalry appeared between us, especially my discovery of the early stages of O. chimaera in 1971 and O. goliath in 1972, or through my study of biology and peculiar mating habits of O. meridionalis. Ray certainly was a great lepidopterist and also a remarkable man. Indeed he was one of the first to thoroughly study the biology of Ornithoptera, especially that of O. alexandrae." In 1973 Jan went to Popondetta and was able to observe and photograph the early stages and adults of O. alexandrae, how different from today when all the rainforest in that area has been logged and turned into oil palm plantations and when one has to travel to remote villages in dangerous country, invested with rascal gangs to see the world's largest butterfly. Jan writing pers comm " I got the report from 2011 (when I was in Cairns) that a small group of American lepidopterists was robbed at gun point near Popondetta when they wanted to see and photograph/video alexandrae. They were robbed and stripped of all their belongings (even clothes) and were lucky to stay alive!! Yet the Police was stationed nearby but didn't do anything! So no birdwing (not even alexandrae) is worth taking such risks!"
In 1976 Jan travelled to the Arfak Mountains in the then Irian Jaya, now known as West Papua, he was able to see for himself the high concentration of birdwings that are found there, including Ornithoptera Rothschildi that is found nowhere else. Jan was critical of the WWF butterfly farming that was set up among the Arfak Hatam people, stating that in the end it brought them little benefit, writing " Unfortunately, they have been the victims of exploitation by many unscrupulous dealers & agencies, being paid ridiculously very little for each birdwing pupa or adult specimen, while the other party was reaping all the profits for their hard work!"
O.meridionalis tarunggarensis was only known by two female specimens that were collected during 1921 by the Pratt brothers in the Weyland Mountains. Jan was determined to rediscover this taxon in West Papua. In 1978 he arrived at Kamrau Bay and proceeded up the Uruma River and then trekked overland towards Lake Yarmur in the foothills west of the Weyland Mountains. After an exhaustive search he finally found the host plant of O. meridionalis with larvae, which he photographed together with the emerging imagoes. This exciting discovery was published in his 1981 paper, On the rediscovery of Ornithoptera meridionalis tarunggarensis Joicey & Talbot in a new locality in Kamrau Bay, south-west Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Transactions of the Himeji Natural History Association 1981 : 2-14.
During the 1978 field trip at 100 meters Jan caught a remarkable specimen of Ornithoptera paradisea flavescens where the green iridescence covered the entire forewing. At that time it was not known if this was a typical specimen of the O. paradisea population occurring in the Lake Yamur area, but is now recognized as an extreme and rare aberration of that species that Deslisle (2012) named f. jeanpierrei. In this area Jan also observed O. goliath and O. tithonus and he took an usual female specimen of the latter. Jan's remarkable O. Paradisea aberration was sold to a Japanese collector (Pasternak pers comm).
Ornithoptera paradisea flavescens f. jeanpierrei. Lake Yamur, West Paupa,1978.
Female specimen of Ornithoptera tithonus with much reduced forewing markings. Lake Yamur 1978. Ex Pasternak collection.
Jan Pastenak Cairns, 1979, with his O. paradisea specimens.
Jan recorded that he returned to the Lake Yamur region in 1979 & 1980. During the 1980 expedition he collected ova of O. meridionalis at 700 m = 2,100 feet that emerged in July 1981, producing three males and one female but unfortunately they did not enclose properly. Jan regarded these specimens of O. meridionalis from the highlands of Lake Yamur as distinct from those in the lowland rainforest of Kamrau Bay, the differences which he outlined in his paper published in Papilio International (1986) Western Ornithoptera (Schoenbergia) meridionalis two forms of subspecies tarunggarensis. Jan writes pers comm " In my opinion this highland meridionalis is not just a local form but could represent an entirely a new race. It does not only have the different cubital pattern and increased iridescence of the forewing but also the shape and the structure of the hindwing and the tail is quite different than in other lowland forms of meridionalis." This golden highland form of O. meridionalis was named in honour of Jan in Outstanding Birdwings Butterflies, p.663 as f. pasternaki by Deslisle and Sclavo (2015), together with an illustration of the holotype specimen which is in the collection of Dr. Takashi Ohya. Jan writing per comm " A pair was given to Jan Haugum and 2 males ended up in Japan."
A photograph of O. meridionalis f. pasternaki collected by Jan Pasternak, image by Ray Straatman with notes.
In 1980 Jan set off on an expedition to the Torricelli Mountains, East Sepik PNG and to the remote Bewani Mountains on the border with West Papua. Here Jan found the adults and early stages of both O. goliath supremus and O. paradisea borchi. Some males of O. goliath supremus from the Bewani Mountains were extremely golden and are probably referable to f. aurata Rousseau-Decelle 1935.
O. goliath supremus f. aurata Rousseau-Decelle 1935. Bewani Mountains, Papua New Guinea 1980. Ex Pasternak Collection.
In 1981 Jan travelled to the Buin area of South Bougainville to observe the adults and early stages of O. victoriae and O.priamus urvillianus. By this time Jan was living in Cairns, he was able to observe both O. priamus euphorion and O. priamus richmondia, these have been previously regarding as subspecies of O. priamus but several authors including Jan regarded them as distinct species.
Jan was interested in many other butterflies and his observations and high quality photographs of these that were found during his travels in Java (1976, 1985 and subsequent visits) and to Sulawesi (1985 & 1987) were published in Fluttering Encounters in the Amazing Archipelago (2000). Jan was probably the last person to observe Papilio lampsacus on Java, however in spite of this butterfly not been seen for many years Jan was convinced it was not extinct, writing in pers comm " P. lampsacus is not extinct. It survives in at least one locality on Gunung Salak and possibly on G. Gede as well. But on G. Salak it has a better chance to survive because this mountain has a very rough and hard to access terrain with very steep and heavily forested slopes. Furthermore, it is a highly protected area and nobody is allowed to enter it without a special and hard to obtain permit. G. Salak is also the only known locality in West Java where Atroph. sycorax was found. In 1994 I went to G. Salak in order to find and photograph A. sycorax for my book (Fluttering Encounters...) but had no luck. But I saw a glimpse of P. lampsacus as it sped past me and quickly disappeared up the slope in thick forest foliage! Actually, P. lampsacus was not a rare butterfly in the former times neither was it a strictly highland species. When there was still some low to medium elevation rainforest left in West Java in the past, especially around Bogor, many specimens of lampsacus were collected by the colonial Dutch collectors. Up to about the early 1960's this butterfly could often be spotted in the world famous Bogor Botanic Gardens as some specimens were straying there from the nearby forest. As gradually the low to medium rainforest had been chopped down and disappeared many of the Javanese butterflies were pushed and forced to adapt to the highland montane forest habitat, the phenomenon which I describe in my book (chapter, Focus on Java). P. lampsacus is strictly endemic to West Java and has never been found further east in Central or East Java. Same goes for another species, Atrophaneura luchti, which is strictly endemic to two mountain ranges in East Java, G. Argopuro and Ijen."
It was during his visits to the little explored Yapen Island in West Papua during 1991 & 1994 that Jan considered he had found what he called the " Butterfly Paradise Island". Yapen had been little explored entomologically because of its rugged rainforest interior with high mountains rising to 1500 meters. During his visit he was the first to find Papilio laglaizei on Yapen which he considered to be a distinct subspecies. O. priamus and O. goliath f.loc ukihidei Hanafusa 1994 had been found on Yapen in the early 1990s and Jan was convinced that other species of Ornithoptera occurred there, and in this he was proved correct when during his 1994 expedition he observed two species of Ornithoptera that had previously been unrecorded from the island, writing in 2000 " Flying high and feeding on the flowers of that rainforest giant were many birdwings of not only O.priamus & O.goliath but also of a new (and to my knowledge to this day, not described as yet) subspecies O.paradisea & O.tithonus. I stayed there for hours, watching that wonderful spectacle in a complete amazement & excitement, not being able to do much else. That was as close as a lepidopterist can get to paradise!" Frustratingly he was unable to capture the Yapen O.paradisea & O.tithonus but these were described from material collected by dealers as O. tithonus f.loc elisabethae Dufek & Schaffler 2006 and O.paradisea arfakensis f. loc fernandi Deslisle and Scavo 2012. Jan was rightly suspicious of birdwing butterflies from new localities writing in per comm "One has to be very cautious because the specimens collected by Indonesian catchers/suppliers bear very unreliable data and their location origin is very doubtful. These people often give false or misleading data in order to 'create' new forms or spp from new locations to get much higher prices for them! "
Jan per comm gave further information on the Islands near Yapen "Biak has absolutely unsuitable habitat for Schoenbergia. The soil is very poor & dry and the whole island consists of coral reef rocks. Supiori Island yes, there is Schoenbergia, this island has a different topography and soil structure than Biak. In 1990's I sent my faithful Irianese field assistants from Yapen to explore Waar and Numfoor Islands. They reported these islands were almost devoid of forest and certainly no Schoenbergia there, only priamus."
Jan finally returned to his native Czechoslovakia, where he spent his last days of an exciting life well spent among the butterflies he loved.
Jan Pasternak (sitting left) with Jan Haugum (sitting on the right), Ray Straatman (standing right) and Rieng de Jong (left) at Rijeks Natural History Museum in Leiden, Netherlands, October 1981.
* The images in the article was used with written permission of Jan Pasternak (2013) and those images he sent to Jacques Porteneuve, were very kindly provided by him.
In Memoriam of Jan Pasternak 1948-2013.
