The story of a great explorer --- “Boys be adventurous!” PART 1

▲Detani's Great Orange Tip (Hebomoia leucippe detanii) male UP（Preserved in RIEB, Tokyo）

The story of a great explorer

   --- “Boys be adventurous!” PART 1
    Now the majority of Japanese butterfly enthusiasts are old-timers. But you can still find not a few young people who love butterflies if you look around carefully. There seems to be constantly some proportion of butterfly lovers in any age group as if it were an inherent part of the Japanese culture.

    Thanks to the advancement of information technology and telecommunication, it is now very easy to find such butterfly lovers in the　younger generations and to communicate with them. Frequent talking with them has made me realize that many of them are considerably introvertish. Although overseas trips, supported by the strong Japanese Yen, are easy to make now, they are reluctant to go abroad to chase exotic butterflies. In other words, as they are so blessed with much information and many specimens at home in Japan, they do not have to go all the way around to overseas. But as a middle-aged butterfly lover, I greatly enjoy to go out in fields and to watch live butterflies in the wild. Sometimes you may feel erroneously that everything has been unveiled and studied in butterflies. But in fact it is only the tip of an iceberg that we have already revealed. Many striking species still unknown to us are surely flying in some places on earth.

    Today I would like to introduce a great Japanese butterfly hunter and explorer, Mr. DETANI Hiromi (1955-) who now lives in Bali, Indonesia. He is very famous for discovering the conspicuous new subspecies detanii of Hebomoia leucippe. Born in Osaka, western Japan, he was an earnest insect collector even as a young boy. When he was an undergraduate student at Hokkaido University, he started overseas collecting trips in tropical islands. After visiting Okinawa and the Philippines, he went to Indonesia for the first time when he was in the graduate school.
Fascinated by the amazing diversity of butterflies and the nature in Indonesia, he eventually dropped out of the graduate school, and started to explore from island to island. His trekking in deep tropical rainforest for days and wondering from a small island to another by small boat were literally “explorations.” He has discovered many new species and subspecies, and has revealed their life histories.

▲Map of Peleng island

   In 1982 he visited Peleng, a small island east of Sulawesi. All over the island from the inland to the coastlines was covered with thick tropical rainforest. When he went there, a timber company was constructing a road to carry out timbers from the inland. He was very fortunate to reach the inland forest deep in the island. There he encountered an incredible sight. A flaming red butterfly slashed through like a red lightning on the green canvas of the rainforest. The butterfly occasionally fed on flowers together with the ordinary Great Orange Tip (Hebomia glaucippe).

   The Great Orange Tip (Hebomia glaucippe) ranges from India to Indonesia widely covering the Oriental region. On its extreme south- western distribution edge, the sister species Hebomia leucippe is found. These two species had been thought to be allopatric with each other. But in Peleng island, the red Hebomoia is seen together with the Great Orange Tip (Hebomia glaucippe). After the careful examination, now the all-red Hebomoia is treated as a subspecies of Hebomia leucippe.

Recently interesting forms (hybrid of glaucippe and leucippe or merely a form of leucippe) have also been discovered from Peleng. This great mystery is still unsolved.

▲ Hebomia glaucippe (Left); Hybrid? A form of leucippe? (middle); Hebomoia leucippe detanii(right), all from Peleng island (Preserved in RIEB, Tokyo)

   When you talk about explorers, you often imagine them as muscular and tough guys. But Mr. Detani is a silent person of a medium height and build. He looks not like a man in the jungle, but like a man in laboratory coat at a university. His untiring passion for unknown butterflies must have driven him to numerous explorations.

    Butterfly Society of Japan is eagerly hoping appearances of many kins of Detani, young butterfly hunters full of frontier spirit.

(to be continued)