Last week, I had a wonderful trip to Calabria, the Scandinavia of Italy, with my beloved Balfour-Browne Club. After landing in Napoli, the third largest city in Italy, I took a train to Lamezia Terme with Zuqi, our new club meeting participant. Zuqi and I visited a beach by the Mediterranean Sea and observed insects (Pictures 1&2).
After a tough car trip on the winding mountain road (Picture 3), I arrived at Villaggio Mancuso with our Dutch beetlers, Barend and Oscar. There I saw other beetlers! I just can’t believe it had been 5 years since we met last time! It’s all the covid pandemic to blame!
During the first dinner, our president, Anders Nilsson, gave a speech to open the club meeting. He mentioned his Swedish friend, Joja the rockstar of water beetles, who used to come to club meetings with him but unfortunately passed away last year. Joja’s story with water beetles was published on pages 7 – 9 in Latissimus 55 with materials by Anders, Steven Routledge and Garth Foster.
- Read Hello Again, Arctic
On the first day morning, we collected in a meadow ditch (Picture 5). I was very happy, because there was quite much vegetation in the water, which indicates high probability of getting dytiscids, based on my research (or superstition developed from my Helsinki pond data). I got an individual of Hydroporus and gave it to Helena afterwards but I was unable to provide the coordinates of the location, because the place had no phone signals :p I got some Ilybius fuliginosus and some Laccophilus sp. for myself. In Helsinki, I have only got Laccophilus in an urban agricultural pond in Viikki campus and in some protected ponds near Muumilampi in the same landscape. Now I am waiting to buy a copy of Fauna d’Italia volume by Mario E. Franciscolo to identify the specimens…
We collected in different habitat types during the three days, such as streams, bogs, and even dried ponds (Pictures 6 – 9)! This is because species may prefer very different habitats. Some like stagnant water, whereas some like running water. I learned from the president that one should try to find stagnant water near streams, disturb the water, and wait. The hydrophilids usually appear on the water surface first, because they are not good swimmers. It usually takes a longer while before dytiscids come to exchange air on the water surface. When they appear, collect the beetles quickly. Then one will yield quite good catches!
I was clearly the worst collector in the club meeting. The good thing is that I don’t compete with others. I was happy with any specimens that I got; for example, Hydroporus palustris in Abisko, Swedish Lapland made me very happy too, although I have lots of them in Helsinki! The beetles in Italy were mostly new to me, except for a few old friends, such as Ilybius ater. I was so happy to got some ‘little elephant’, Hyphydrus larvae, in my net. I released them back after taking pictures (Picture 10).
The club meeting was very well organised by Vincenzo Fox. Our collecting trips were in the National Park of Sila, which requires permission to collect, so a few talks were arranged to convince the authorities that we were doing scientific work (Pictures 11&12). Every day, delicious sandwiches with local products were arranged as lunch for everyone (Picture 14). I had no doubt that Vincenzo deserved to have the Trophy for this year (Picture 16)!
Of course, the trip was not only about beetles but also about food. When in Italy, one eats very well! I had lots of gelato, antipasto, pizza, pasta, risotto, … … National Park of Sila is certainly an excellent place for beetles and delicacies 😋 Thank the Fox and the local guides for the marvellous trip!
- 阅读中文版：《南意“北欧”采集记》
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A very enjoyable account of the meeting, which I was very sorry not to be able to attend. But now I have some living Aphodius from the dried-out pond. Fingers crossed for chromosomes!
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