Saturniidae Expedition to North-Vietnam 2

Saturniidae Expedition to North-Vietnam

by Teemu Klemetti (email), Otso Reunanen, Tero Taipale and Sami Haapala

The first one!!!

A view from the collecting spot during the daytime.
A habitat of Salassa lemaii.

Other Saturniidae we found flying there on October were Actias selene, Actias maenas, Loepa diversiocellata, Loepa sikkima and Antheraea chengtuana. Unfortunately Loepa anthera was not on the wing at the time. It flies during the summer in the same area.

During the day and at dusk there were many nice Zygaenidae and Agaristidae flying along the road. We visited also the top of the first Tam Dao peak that is the classic location for famous Teinopalpus aureus shinkaii. The season was already over but some Meandrysa sciron were still on the wing.

A habitat of Teinopalpus aureus in the peak.
There were some platforms in the trees to help the catching!

We left Tam Dao National Park in the early morning of October 20 and headed towards Sapa where we stayed the next night.

Collecting in Mt Fansipan National Park

The collecting in Mt Fansipan turned out to be trickier than collecting in Tam Dao. The primary forests were deep inside the park requiring a 4 hours walk along the trekking route. We met a National Park ranger in the evening before climbing to the mountain in Sapa. He joined us for the trip to Fansipan.

A view from Tram Ton ranger station towards the Fansipan National Park.

On the morning of October 21 we hired eleven strong Hmong tribe porters to carry our equipment to collecting areas.
We had two generators, 120 liters of gas and enough water/food for a week.
It was amazing how those little men were able to carry such heavy things.
They walked along the steep and slippery paths with 40kg (88pounds) generators as fast as we did with small backpacks.

To the right is a Hmong tribe porter with a 40kg generator on his back and smile on his face.

A short break with the porters during the hike to Fansipan.
"Childrena childreni" were abundant in this meadow.

There were some nice mountain forests along the way to the collecting site.

We found two decent collecting spots near the Camp 1 on the hiking route. There we collected most of the nights. The forest had burned ten years ago from large areas and the primary forests were more or less scattered patches.

Camp One habitat

A view from the collecting spot in 2250m. The forest down below is a habitat of Saturnia naumanni, Actias chapae, Solus parvifenestratus sinjaevi and Loepa Miranda.

The same place (Camp One) at night.

The forest looked much better around the Camp Two where the fire hadn’t destroyed any of the forest. However, there was the problem that we didn’t find such place where the lights would shine to the canopy from up to down. We collected here one night only and returned to the first camp.

The forest around Camp Two further along the track was very nice.

Camp Two

The camp and the lamps are in the middle of the forest. Even when collecting inside the forest with poor visibility of the lights, we found the same Saturniidae species as in the first spot.

Actias chapae in the net.

Alive Actias chapae female in hand!

Unfortunately the female died a week after this picture in Finland without laying a single egg. However, it was a luck that it didn’t break itself too badly either.

The species we found from Fansipan had certain flight times in the night. Solus parvifenestratus flew from 19:00 to 20:00. Actias chapae males were on the wing from 23:00-01:00 and the the only female came to the light at 22:30. Saturnia naumanni and Loepa miranda males were flying from 01:00 to 04:00 and females came to the light between 19:00 and 21:00.

The trip was successful. We found the species we were seeking as well as a few other nice Saturniidae. We collect all families of Lepidoptera so we got many new and very interesting species for our collections, especially Noctuidae, Notodontidae, Arctiidae, Lymantriidae and Geometriidae fauna from Mt. Fansipan. The peak season for most of the moths and butterflies was already over, but still there were good amounts of material flying. The best timing for the most moths and butterflies would be during July-August. However, our target species: Salassa lemaii and Actias chapae cannot be found then, so this timing was our considered decision.

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