Amazon Spiders and Butterflies

An International Museum Fellowship of the German Federal Cultural Foundation allows us to reactivate an earlier cooperation between our museum and the Brazilian National Research Institution for Amazonia (INPA) in Manaus.

The German Federal Cultural Foundation The former cooperation was restricted to joint research on the diversity of arthropods in Amazonian rain forests. The fellow Rosemary S. Vieira studied the impact of army ants on the spider assemblages for her Master thesis, supervised by Dr. Hubert Höfer. Later she "followed" butterflies associated with army ants and ant-following birds, feeding on bird droppings. During the last years she built up a voucher collection of butterflies from the Central Amazon and was responsible for organizing and expanding INPA's collection. During her work she got into contact with native people and visitors interested in the butterfly fauna and envisioned an identification guide for the common species with information on their natural history and ecology. During her stay in Germany she can profit from the experience in collection management of butterflies, digitalization and database administration and especially presentation of the data and knowledge to the public in form of expositions and Internet sites. She will offer her expertise in Neotropical butterflies and spiders. As a result museum visitors and the interested public in Germany will experience facts about scientific work at a museum and in the international context by an attractive and exciting way. The communication of knowledge on the species richness, beauty and virtue of an insect group is a contribution to the German National Strategy on Biological Diversity. The fellow will apply her experience and knowledge realizing an exposition on the theme after returning in a small museum in Manaus.