A Catalogue of the Insects of Southern Africa

A Collaboration Co-ordinated by Martin H. Villet

Department of Zoology & Entomology, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 6140 South Africa

South Africa has an amazingly rich fauna and flora, and is named by Conservation International as one of the planet's 17 most megadiverse countries. According to their statistics, South Africa ranks sixth in the world for total diversity, and has significant rates of endemism in many groups of organisms (3rd highest for higher plants, 14th for mammals, 17th for birds, 14th for reptiles, and 17th for amphibians). The country also contains two of the world's "biodiversity hotspots": the Succulent Karoo, and the Cape Floristic Region.

Understandably, these figures focus on large, visible organisms, but more than half of the organisms on Earth are insects. How diverse is South Africa's insect life?

The aims of this web site are

• to catalogue the insect biodiversity of South(ern) Africa, particularly in terms of agreements like the Convention on Biodiversity;
• to provide a channel of communication between experts and the wider public;
• to provide a "shop window" for professional Southern African systematic entomology;
• to encourage participation by everyone holding expertise in the systematics, biogeography and biodiversity of Southern African insects.

This web site started life as a checklist of the aquatic insects of South Africa, spurred on by the encouragement and active participation of folk such as Ferdy de Moor, Helen Barber-James, Arthur Harrison, Tanza Clarke, Tessa Hedge, Jason Londt, Sarah Gess, Fred Gess, Penny Greenslade, Mervyn Mansell, Ian Millar, Mike Stiller, Mary Jean Gabriel, Hamish Robertson, Marc De Meyer, Jeff Skevington, Mihaly Földvári, and Edward Vanden Berghe and the example set by the Transvaal Museum's on-line catalogue of the Biodiversity of South Africa. Major developments flowed from the encouragement by the Institute for Water Quality Studies and the Water Research Comission, and the site has evolved to include reference material, links to other specialist web sites, and pictures of many of the animals. In time it may even incorporate keys too.

We are particularly grateful to the South African Museum and the Institute for Water Quality Studies, Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, for providing photographs of some of the insects. Links to other sites dealing with the biology of specific insect groups are being added to the appropriate pages. If you have anything that you would like to contribute, please drop us an e-message.

You are welcome to make links to any page(s) in this site, and to make regularly updated mirror sites, but please do not copy or redistribute material from this Web site because the copies will not be kept up to date. Copyright of each page in this site is held by its author.