WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Saturday, July 16, 2011

BUTTERFLIES: MORE CHANGES TO THE BRITISH LIST

One of the things that I bang on about regularly in these pages is the fact that far from knowing everything about such a well known subject as British wildlife, our lamentable lack of knowledge keeps on rearing up and biting us on the bum.

For the second time in a few weeks, therefore, here is a new butterfly for the British and Irish list.

But it is not even as straightforward as that! Until recently it was claimed that Leptidea reali was the only wood white in Ireland. Now it appears that whiule there are now accepted that there are two species, Leptidea sinapis and L.juvernica (the new species) L.reali probably doesn't live in Ireland at all!

The big volte face here is that sinapis was supposed to be confined to the mainland, but as the article that I have linked to at the top of the page asks:

"The work of *Dincã and his colleagues suggests that 270,000 years ago the common ancestor of these three species split into two. One of these lines eventually evolved into L. juvernica. The other division split again about 120,000 years ago and became what we know today as L. sinapis and L. reali. 27,000 years ago L. sinapis expanded into the territory of L. juvernica. So is L. sinapis in Ireland an interloper that arrived late and since then conditions were never favourable enough to colonise the whole island, or has it more recently contracted in its range and retreated to the ‘Burren’?"


For what it is worth, I hazard a bet that all three species will eventually be found not only in Ireland but on mainland Britain...


PS: When I refer to Ireland as being part of the British Isles, I mean in the geographical, not the political sense...


















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