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In Vol II (page 15) four extreme weather systems
that serve as butterfly “conveyers” from Africa and
# Iraqi border, to the southern border with Saudi Arabia.
Arabia to the East Mediterranean were discussed
and their synoptic charts presented. To these well
known systems the rare Medicane (Mediterranean
hurricane) should be added; in the end of October
and early November 2021 a devastating medicane
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tropical-like storm (TLC) hit the “fingers” of south
Italy in Calabria and the eastern coast of Sicily. 100
km/h winds, huge amounts or rain - 300 mm were
measured in just a few hours in Catania, Augusta
and Scordia resulted in unexpected and never-
seen-before floods (Fig. 1). Climatologists explained
that sea surface temperature (SST) increase of
about 8°C in the closed Mediterranean sea with its
large and warm body of water caused this extreme
medicane. Hagay & Brenner (2021) examined C
Mediterranea TLC of 13 Dec. 2005 off the southern
coast of Italy (upper Fig. 2) and the rare explosive
cyclone (cyclogenesis) of 10-11 Dec. 2010 in the
NE Mediterranean that brought over 7.5 meter high
waves to Haifa bay (lower Fig. 2). Their simulations
suggest that “TLCs will intensify as SST increases
with (globe) warming up”. DB adds that south-east
Mediterranean medicanes may add a fifth type of
“conveyer” to relocate N African butterflies to the
Levant (Benyamini, 2021d).
)LJ. 2 (upper: 13 Dec. 2005) & (lower: 10-11 Dec. 2010) extracted from
Hagay & Brenner, 2021.
)LJ. 29 Oct. 2021 Medicane in S Italy (Calabria) and East Sicily - Wave Height [m]. source: ilmeteo.it
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While Renan et al., (in prep.) red list of the Israeli butterflies is planned for publication in 2022. The out-dated list of
protected butterflies in Israel that was declared in 2009 should be updated as well in-accordance-with the nowadays
actual threats on our butterflies, and sooner the better.
10
$ERXW Upper Egypt (Luxor and Aswan), its coastal Mediterranean
dunes and eastern Egypt's Red Sea coast. The peace
the author agreements with Jordan in 1994 opened its little-studied
fauna to numerous visits across the entire country from
'XEL %HQ\DPLQL the northern border with Syria, the eastern desert and
FRES (1978), Founding
President of the Israeli Lep. Summarising these expeditions were articles in the ILS
Soc. (since 1983), Research Bulletin (in Hebrew), the discovery of a new species
Assoc., Univ. of Florida (2015) of blue, Pseudophilotes jordanicus Benyamini, 2000
and honourable member of in Gebel Um-Adami on the Saudi border (Benyamini,
the Entomological Society of 2000d), and a two-year survey on the Butterflies of the
Israel (2019). Dana Reserve, Edom (Benyamini, 2001f, 2002a, 2002b);
the final list of Jordanian butterflies increased from 81
(Larsen & Nakamura, 1983) to 95. In 2017, while at
Born in British Mandatory Palestine in 1941, seven the Hope Museum, Oxford University seeking butterflies
years before the independence of Israel (1948) and an collected in historical Mandatory Palestine by British
amateur lepidopterist since 1950. BSc in Mechanical officers (1917-1932), he found a small unpublished
Engineering (1963), MSc School of Graduates in butterfly collection, the product of expeditions to the Holy
Aeronautical Engineering (1965) – both at the Technion, Land by the clerics Canon Baker Tristram (1863-64) and
Haifa. Established the Israeli Lepidopterists Society (ILS) Octavius P. Cambridge (1864-65) and brought it to print
in 1983, elected as its President and is author of its (Benyamini & Hogan, 2020). Reaching his eighties, he
biannual ‘News of the Israeli Lepidopterist’s Society’ to contributed his butterfly collection, diaries and literature
the present. Authored ‘The Zoogeography of the Israeli to the National Insect Collection at the Steinhardt
Butterflies’ (Benyamini, 1988), Author of ‘A Field Guide Museum of Natural History, Tel Aviv University, Israel.
to the Butterflies of Israel, Hermon, Sinai and Jordan’
(Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1990–2018, seven
editions (in Hebrew). full colour, 248 pp, 12,000 copies).
Author of ‘Butterfly Gardening in Israel and the Middle
East’ (4D MicroRobotics Publication, 2009, (Hebrew), full
colour, ~1400 photographs, 357 pp.). Author of over 350 $ERXW
butterfly papers in Hebrew. Author or co-author of over 60
papers in English, many of them dealing with Neotropical WKH (QJOLVK
(South American) blues (lycaenids) of the Andes and
Patagonia in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Equador, (GLWRU
Brazil and Uruguay – and gained a world-wide reputation
as the Nabokov-Blues field researcher (Johnson & $UW 6KDSLUR
Coates, 1999; Vila et al., 2011; Blackwell & Johnson,
2016) discovering some 30 new species and later wrote
or co-authored their first descriptions and life-histories
with Dr Kurt Johnson (ex Curator of Butterflies at the Art Shapiro grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA,
AMNH, NYC) and Dr Zsolt Bálint (Curator of Butterflies, where he became fixated on butterflies by age 10 or 11.
National Museum of Natural History Budapest, Hungary). After reading “Evolution: The Modern Synthesis” by Julian
He began monitoring the Israeli butterflies in 1985 and Huxley in junior high school, he resolved to combine
in 2009 established the Israeli BMS (Butterfly Monitoring butterflies and evolutionary biology into a career. He
Scheme) together with Dr Guy Pe'er (Leipzig, Germany) attended Central High School, the select academic high
and Dr Racheli Schwartz-Tzachor (Zikhron Ya’akov, school in Philadelphia, where he won a Westinghouse
Israel). Organized three international congresses on Science Talent Scholarship that allowed him to attend the
Butterflies of the Middle East [2008 (Jerusalem), 2013 University of Pennsylvania, becoming an undergraduate
(Rehovot) and 2018 (Tel Aviv) Israel]. In 2019, initiated appendage to the research group headed by the
the first annual spring big Israeli butterfly count led by distinguished ecologist Robert MacArthur, and receiving
the Israeli Lep. Soc. and supported by the Steinhardt his B.A. in 1966. He then secured a National Science
Museum of Natural History, Tel Aviv University, the Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship which allowed him
Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) and to pursue his Ph.D. at Cornell University (1970). After
Ramat Hanadiv Nature Park, Zikhron Ya'akov. With his a brief stay in the City University of New York he was
vast field experience of seven decades in the Middle offered a position at the University of California, Davis
Eastern countries, additional butterfly expeditions were (1971), where he has been ever since. He is the author
undertaken to Armenia, Cyprus, Djibouti, East Africa of roughly 300 scientific papers, mostly on butterfly
(Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania), E Egypt, Ethiopia, Greece, ecology, evolution and biogeography, and is the author
South Africa, Spain and Turkey, with the aim of breeding of the Field Guide to the Butterflies of the San Francisco
Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions (U.C. Press, 2007).
and completing the missing life-histories of butterflies
of the wider Levant presented in this series. Following He has worked in Latin America since 1977. He is a
the 1967 Six-Day War with Egypt, he studied the Sinai Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, the California
Peninsula butterflies for 14 years (Benyamini, 1984) and Academy of Sciences and the Explorers Club. He has
after the peace treaty visited the Egyptian Entomological taught ecology, evolution, biogeography, tropical ecology,
Society in Dokki, Cairo as well as historical biotopes in chemical ecology, and history & philosophy of biology.
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