by Honor Phillipps.

From the Publisher

About the Author

Honor Phillipps has studied and photographed butterflies over many years both in the UK and in Borneo where she has travelled widely through Sabah, Brunei, Sarawak and Kalimantan.

Product Details

• Publisher: John Beaufoy Publishing
• Format: Softback
• Pages: 176

A Review by Guy Padfield - 23rd May 2024

Poised on the cusp of the Oriental and Australian biogeographic regions (though technically just inside the Oriental region), the vast, tropical island of Borneo is a place of extraordinary ecological wealth and importance. Its rainforests are among the oldest in the world and harbour many endemic and often now critically endangered species of animal and plant, including most famously the Bornean Orang Utan. Unsurprisingly, the island is home to an impressive total of some 1,000 species of butterfly – that is, roughly twice as many as the whole of Europe – of which no fewer than 81 are endemic. More surprisingly, there has until now been no dedicated guide to Borneo’s butterflies in English. The present volume aims to fill this gap, or if not actually to fill it, at least to position itself there in a helpful way. More on that later!

Like all the Naturalist’s Guides, the book is compact and well designed and the pictures are excellently reproduced. It opens with a schematic overview of the butterfly families, followed by a brief introduction to Borneo and its habitats - essentially, various grades of rainforest, as well as cleared land with shrubs and grasses. As an alpinist, I was intrigued to learn that no Bornean butterflies breed above 2000m, even though there are plenty of peaks above this altitude, the highest being 4095m. There is a useful section here suggesting sites (mostly in the north of the island) for watching butterflies in Borneo, with a few URLs for those actively planning trips. All butterfly books are bound, by unwritten convention, to include accounts of butterfly biology, development and behaviour, and this one duly meets its obligations, illustrating the descriptions with Bornean butterflies. There are some interesting snippets here and the section is by no means redundant, but it is not, of course, what we are really here for. This honour goes to the species accounts, which occupy by far the bulk of the book.

The Naturalist’s Guides make no claim to be comprehensive field guides to the butterflies of the regions they cover. They are, as the name suggests, aimed more at the general naturalist who enjoys knowing what he or she is seeing but will not lose sleep over an unidentified insect. Of necessity, all the volumes are selective, choosing to describe and illustrate those species most likely to be encountered or noticed and omitting those of interest only to specialists. That said, this particular volume takes a more minimalist approach than most, reducing the number treated to just 122. According to the introduction, 90% of butterfly sightings are from this 10% of species, so you should still be able to identify a significant majority of what you see. But it means the book cannot be considered a field guide in the normal sense – certainly not in the twitcher’s sense. It is, rather, an introduction to the butterflies of Borneo and their biology, with reference to the commonest species.

There is a plus side to reducing the number of butterflies treated, in that it allows the individual species accounts to be fuller and more interesting than might otherwise be the case. As well as the standard rubrics there is supplementary information about behaviour, pattern and in some instances the people who have contributed to butterfly knowledge. I learnt, for example, about the protective behaviour of the female Malayan Eggfly (Hypolimnas anomala), who guards her eggs for a week after laying – something I had not come across before and found fascinating – and about the 19th century zoologist, John Whitehead, who gave his name to Whitehead’s Baron (Euthalia whiteheadi). The pictures are very good – again partly because number is sacrificed to size and quality – and are well chosen for the purposes of identification, when taken in conjunction with the text descriptions and references to similar species. Other subsections in the species pages describe the habitat, range and larval foodplants of the butterflies and there is a line in the margin of each account showing the actual wingspan.

The book concludes with a section illustrating a few Bornean moths (perhaps as a reminder that in tropical regions moths may often be as striking and colourful as butterflies), illustrations of the early stages of representative species from each family, and descriptions of a few larval foodplants and nectar plants.

One thing I would have liked to see, and which could perhaps be included in a future edition, would be some pointer to the species not included. A complete checklist of the butterflies of Borneo, for example, would be brilliant – or if space prohibited that, at least a link to such a checklist on the internet. Alternatively, the species descriptions could make more explicit and systematic reference to the commonest species not treated, such that the enthusiast could do his or her own research on the internet. Indeed, I feel the world of nature publishing is missing a trick here: integrated books and websites could bring the naturalist the best of both worlds and relieve the author of some of the restrictions of space.

Caveats aside, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and felt a little closer to the butterflies of Borneo by the end of it. It does not yet fill that gap – there is still room for a more comprehensive field guide to the region in English and I hope someone will write one – but it is a good start. If you are visiting Borneo, you would be mad not to get a copy, and if you are not, but like me have a bookcase full of butterfly books, I can recommend this volume as an attractive and fascinating addition to your library.