Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London for permission to study and photograph specimens in their collections.
They also wish to thank the late Michael Shaffer for his unfailing patience and generous help in explaining some of the finer points of thyridid and pyralid classification. Without his encouragement and industry over decades this publication could not have been undertaken. Let this website be a monument to his assistance and endeavour.
We are deeply grateful to Dr Jeremy Holloway and Dr David Agassiz for their most helpful comments on drafts of the text which form the basis of this website. However any remaining errors, omissions or deficiencies are solely the responsibility of the site's three authors.
We would also like to thank the many other staff members at the NHM, especially the Curator of the Microlepidoptera collections, Mr Kevin Tuck, for general support, for their help during visits to the collections and for the supply of a number of images.
We are grateful to Professor (Dr) Konrad Fiedler for permission to work in the Department of Population Ecology of the University of Vienna and Dr Christian Schulze of the same institute who allowed us to photograph their collections from Borneo, which form the centrepiece of the illustrations on this website. Mr Jonathan Brunton took the majority of the better quality photographs. His help and advice on things photographic was invaluable. A minority of illustrations were taken by TMW. Other photographs of specimens were provided by the NHM Photographic Unit (Pl. 4, Herdonia erectilinea, H. pallescens; Pl. 5; H. deminuta, Hypolamprus angulalis; Pl. 7, Banisia lobata). Dr. Mamoru Owada of the Department of Zoology, National Museum of Nature and Science Tokyo, Japan provided the illustration of the holotype of Herdonia acutapex Inoue (Pl. 4, Fig. 131). All photographs of living moths in Plate 10 were provided by Mr John Moore with the exception of Pl. 10, fig. 83a which was taken by Mr. Michael Cermak.
‘En Ahmad Basir bin Omar provided invaluable help in working with TMW to manage the database of over 18,000 images and carrying out the deep etching. He used great skill designing the Plates.’
SLS would like to express his thanks to the Economic Planning Unit of the Malaysian Federal Government for a research permit in 1989 to study and collect pyralids at Danum Valley in Sabah. The data collected are one of the cornerstones of this website. SLS would also like to thank Dr Chey Vun Khen for acting as his local counterpart and for a great deal of general help since the project began in 1989.
. In the immediate years after 1989 the followiing helped to collect microlepidoptera in Borneo as field assistants on this research project: Dr. Louise Ashton, Dr Andrew Davis, Dr. Katie Wilkinson (nee Deaton), Mr Jeremy Griffith, En. Jamaludin Jamil, En. Alex Karolus, En. Anthony Karolus, En. Nasir Majid, Dr John Willott, Dr Sheila Wright, and En. Mohd. Nazran Yaakub. Prof. Roger L. Kitching was also very helpful.
Warm thanks are also due by SLS to Prof. Maryati Mohammed as former Hhead of the Institut Biololgi Tropika dan Pemuliharaan for her long term support and for providing an Honorary Visiting Fellowship at Universiti Malaysia Sabah.
We would like to express thanks to the Mr. Yong Lee Ming (Director, Research) and Mr. Phua Peh Kee (Deputy Director), Department Agriculture, Sabah for permission to visit the Agricultural Research Centre at Tuaran and to photograph some of the specimens held in the insect collection. We also thank the Senior Research Officer Mr. William Wong and the Senior Entomologist, Mr. Jinius Jipanin for facilitating this visit.
Also in Sabah, we would like to express thanks to Datuk Sam Mannan, Director of the Sabah Forestry Department and Dr Lee Ying Fah, Head of Centre (Deputy Director, R&D) for permission to visit the Forest Research Centre, Sepilok, Sandakan. Our thanks also to the Head of the Entomology Section, Dr Chey Vun Khen, for access to the collections and for his unfailing help and support in facilitating many aspects of entomological work in Sabah.
We thank the Danum Valley Management Committee and their secretary Dr. Waidi Sinun for permission to visit the Danum Valley Field Centre (DVFC) and the Danum Valley Conservation Area (DVCA), Lahad Datu, east Sabah, and the Director of the Royal Society South-east Asia Rainforest Research Programme, Dr Glen Reynolds, for help during field research and the opportunity to examine Lepidoptera collections held at DVFC.
We are grateful to the Leeds Literary & Philosophical Society (UK) for a grant to Ms Lanni Zhang to curate the SLS collection and for her careful work on this.
The phpwcms website software was designed and is being developed by the copyright holder, Oliver Georgi. The specific design of this website was the work of Mr Lim Kooi Fong, owner and manager of Biovis Informatics Sdn Bhd in Kuala Lumpur. The initial data uploading to the site was carried out by Ms Tang Fei and the later uploading and site development has been done by Ms Banupriya Kaliana Sundram. We thank them all for their patience, skill and hard work over a 4 year period.
Terry Whitaker, Stephen Sutton and Henry Barlow.
Kuala Lumpur, January 2014