The Butterflies of Hispaniola

The Butterflies of Hispaniola

Author: Albert Schwartz

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 602

ISBN-13:

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"A wealth of field data and ecological information.... Schwartz knows the island and its butterflies better than anyone else alive.... The scholarship is beyond reproach."--Lee D. Miller, curator, Allyn Museum of Entomology, Florida Museum of Natural History The butterflies of the Greater Antilles island of Hispaniola have in general been overlooked since Hall's 1925 summary, a situation Albert Schwartz remedies with this thoroughgoing study. Hispaniola, composed of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, paleogeographically the most interesting of the Antilles, has a topography so ideal for butterflies that nearly two hundred species live there, including sixty endemic species--more than on all the other islands combined. Schwartz's is the first major attempt to uncover the ecological and biogeographic reasons for this diversity. The book contains detailed information on natural history, ecology, taxonomy, elevational distribution, food plants used by adults, and seasonality, as well as occurrence on satellite islands. Schwartz accompanies his species accounts and analyses with photographs of selected ecologies and detailed distribution maps for each species, making this a reference for the general collector to areas that need further research. His descriptive keys, in Spanish and English, list 212 couplets. Besides its obvious value to lepidopterists, this book will fill a need for students on any aspect of West Indian fauna. Albert Schwartz, a professor emeritus of biology at Miami-Dade Community College, is an adjunct curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History and a research associate at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of Natural History, and the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural in Santo Domingo. He has written and coauthored numerous studies on Caribbean amphibians, reptiles, and Lepidoptera.


In the Time of the Butterflies

In the Time of the Butterflies

Author: Julia Alvarez

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Published: 2010-01-12

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1616200995

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Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2024, internationally bestselling author and literary icon Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies is "beautiful, heartbreaking and alive ... a lyrical work of historical fiction based on the story of the Mirabal sisters, revolutionary heroes who had opposed and fought against Trujillo." (Concepción de León, New York Times) Alvarez’s new novel, The Cemetery of Untold Stories, is coming April 2, 2024. Pre-order now! It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. It doesn’t have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas—the Butterflies. In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all four sisters--Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and the survivor, Dedé--speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from secret crushes to gunrunning, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez’s imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human costs of political oppression. "Alvarez helped blaze the trail for Latina authors to break into the literary mainstream, with novels like In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents winning praise from critics and gracing best-seller lists across the Americas."—Francisco Cantú, The New York Times Book Review "This Julia Alvarez classic is a must-read for anyone of Latinx descent." —Popsugar.com "A gorgeous and sensitive novel . . . A compelling story of courage, patriotism and familial devotion." —People "Shimmering . . . Valuable and necessary." —Los Angeles Times "A magnificent treasure for all cultures and all time.” —St. Petersburg Times "Alvarez does a remarkable job illustrating the ruinous effect the 30-year dictatorship had on the Dominican Republic and the very real human cost it entailed."—Cosmopolitan.com


Why the Cocks Fight

Why the Cocks Fight

Author: Michele Wucker

Publisher: Hill and Wang

Published: 2014-04-08

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1466867884

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Like two roosters in a fighting arena, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are encircled by barriers of geography and poverty. They co-inhabit the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, but their histories are as deeply divided as their cultures: one French-speaking and black, one Spanish-speaking and mulatto. Yet, despite their antagonism, the two countries share a national symbol in the rooster--and a fundamental activity and favorite sport in the cockfight. In this book, Michele Wucker asks: "If the symbols that dominate a culture accurately express a nation's character, what kind of a country draws so heavily on images of cockfighting and roosters, birds bred to be aggressive? What does it mean when not one but two countries that are neighbors choose these symbols? Why do the cocks fight, and why do humans watch and glorify them?" Wucker studies the cockfight ritual in considerable detail, focusing as much on the customs and histories of these two nations as on their contemporary lifestyles and politics. Her well-cited and comprehensive volume also explores the relations of each nation toward the United States, which twice invaded both Haiti (in 1915 and 1994) and the Dominican Republic (in 1916 and 1965) during the twentieth century. Just as the owners of gamecocks contrive battles between their birds as a way of playing out human conflicts, Wucker argues, Haitian and Dominican leaders often stir up nationalist disputes and exaggerate their cultural and racial differences as a way of deflecting other kinds of turmoil. Thus Why the Cocks Fight highlights the factors in Caribbean history that still affect Hispaniola today, including the often contradictory policies of the U.S.


Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera

Author: E. D. Edwards

Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 630

ISBN-13: 9780643067004

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Certificate of Commendation Winner at the 2001 Whitley Awards - Best Zoological Reference Section This very detailed compendium of data on taxonomy and nomenclature of Australian butterflies is another in the Catalogue series produced by the Australian Biological Resources Study, a sub-program of Environment Australia. Expanding on the butterfly section of the earlier Checklist of the Lepidoptera of Australia by Nielsen, Edwards & Rangsi (1996) This Catalogue contains the fine details of naming and status of types of Australian butterflies, and information critical for fixing the scientific names of the species. This volume is the 'Who's Who' for the Australian butterfly fauna, the very basic information we all need, but find so difficult to access and evaluate for ourselves. It is introduced by a comprehensive historical and explanatory account of work on Australian butterflies. Details are given of all genus and species synonymies applicable to the Australian fauna. There are details of the type designations of all 507 available generic names, of type data for the 1,004 available species group names and of nomenclatural changes and changes in taxonomic status for most of the 136 valid genera, 400 species, and 371 subspecies. The butterflies have an enormous literature and this catalogue provides a guide to the significant literature of each taxon. An extensive list of larval food plants is also included, as well as succinct information on ecology and distribution and a comprehensive bibliography. Features


Butterflies of the Caribbean and Florida

Butterflies of the Caribbean and Florida

Author: Peter Stiling

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13:

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This is a guide to the most frequently encountered and most brightly coloured species of butterflies to be found in the Caribbean and Florida, from Trinidad with its South American species to Florida and its North American endemics. Material in the book includes the nature and life-cycle of the butterfly, and a consideration of the area and variety of habitats. Over 80 species are described and illustrated.