#13 Seeing the Light – moths and butterflies revealed with Dr. Michael Ochse

Jul 9, 24

4 comments

Episode 13. Seeing the Light – moths revealed. In conversation with Dr. Michael Ochse

[00:00:00] Charlotte Beauvoisin: In this episode of the East Africa Travel Podcast, we go niche. We’re going to have a very different point of view today, as we talk about insects.

When I moved from the UK to Uganda, one of my biggest fears was how I was going to cope with insects. But look at my Instagram now, and you’ll see me holding a giant goliath beetle!

What I’ve come to learn in Uganda isL the bigger the insect, the more fascinated I am. I’m here on the edge of Kibale Forest, which is a protected rainforest. We have shiny green beetles with purple wings. We have huge swallowtail butterflies that are as big as your hand. But if you’d told me 15 years ago, when I was preparing to come to Uganda, that I’d now be buying a field guide to help me identify insects, I probably would have told you, you were mad and that I’d never be doing any such crazy thing.

But if you’ve been following the East Africa Travel Podcast or Diary of a Muzungu for a while, then you’ll know that I live at Sunbird Hill on the edge of Kibale National Park, and we receive visits from all kinds of experts, not just birders and primatologists, but people who study the smallest things.

I remember we had a Russian visitor who came just looking for beetles and when you spend time with experts in any given field really, they really bring that topic to life and it’s for that reason that I want to introduce you to Mikhail or Michael Ochse from Germany. Please bear with me. I absolutely love to talk to Michael, and we’ve talked a few times, but I’ve edited our conversation to make it as non-technical as possible.

I just find it compulsive listening to be around people who’ve given up so much of their time to, to study and to really, get to grips with the living world. We’ve talked about the birds on the podcast. Today we’re going to talk about the bees, well, insects anyway

You’re listening to the East Africa Travel Podcast.

I’m your host, Charlotte Beauvoisin, author of Diary of a Muzungu. Welcome to episode 13.

[00:02:43] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Hello…. Oh, this whole net is buzzing. I just came to check on Michael (Mikhail) and I’ve missed him. I don’t know where he is. He’s out in the dark somewhere. It’s about ten o’clock at night. And he’s got a big light on a tripod. Sort of blue light. This big net draped over it. And it’s attracting lots of insects. Some tiny little – I don’t know what they are. Flies or moths? And then some, some smaller moths. Praying mantis and I’m not sure what else, because the expert isn’t here. You can hear the frogs tonight, don’t they sound fantastic? Ooh, and a wood owl.

[00:04:14] Charlotte Beauvoisin: We’re at Sunbird Hill on the edge of Kibale Forest. We are here with Dr. Mikhail Ochse. Can I ask you, what is it about Sunbird Hill that attracted you, or should I say, or just the region generally?

It was obviously something quite powerful because you’re back, and this time you’ve brought a friend with you. What is the draw about Kibale Forest?

[00:04:35] Dr Michael Ochse: The location of Kibale forest is a very good one because it’s between the huge Congo basin and the East African forest. So it’s in an intermediate place, which gives it diversity from both areas of Africa.

This site here is very close to the natural forest. It’s adjacent to it and this open areas here enable me to attract moths with the light. Rather than I would like to do it in the understory of the forest.

[00:05:08] Charlotte Beauvoisin: So this is a good site for a number of different reasons. But I think it’s quite famous, isn’t it, for a number of species here. The Antimachus?

[00:05:17] Dr Michael Ochse: Yes.

[00:05:17] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Tell us about the Antimachus.

[00:05:19] Dr Michael Ochse: Papilio antimachus is the largest butterfly in Africa and one of the largest in the world with a wingspan of some 14 to 18 centimeters, as far as I know. It’s a butterfly which is currently known only from primary rainforests, so rainforests which aren’t touched by human beings, where all the tree species of a natural forest are still present.

On the other hand, it seems to fly in the canopy – high – and it comes only very rarely on the ground. And you have to be very lucky to see it.

[00:05:56] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Yes, so it sounds like you haven’t seen it yet?

[00:06:00] Dr Michael Ochse: I’ve never seen it, no. And as far as I know, there are only very few sightings here, also in Kibale Forest. But if you would want to plan a trip for seeing it, you would need days or weeks to have at least a small chance of seeing it.

[00:06:16] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Because you’re kind of starting from zero, aren’t you? Because if there are no recent sightings, like where would you start? But quite a challenge for the right person.

And it’s lovely to see you again. You are one of our first guests, if not our first guest, after lockdown. And that was, was it May 2020?

[00:06:33] Dr Michael Ochse: Correct. A butterfly enthusiast here from Uganda, he told me of this place and he called Julia Lloyd, who’s running the site here, and I asked her if it would be possible for me to visit for my moth studies.

[00:06:48] Charlotte Beauvoisin: So, did you say Rogers? We love Rogers. He’s one of the very few Ugandans who have dedicated their lives to lepidoptery, is that right?

[00:06:58] Dr Michael Ochse: Yes. Lepidoptera is the Latin scientific term for butterflies and moths.

[00:07:05] Charlotte Beauvoisin: This is one of the things that I learned from you when you were here before, that that term embraces the moths as well. We kind of dismiss moths don’t we as, I don’t know, less sexy?

[00:07:16] Dr Michael Ochse: People don’t know much about them because they fly at night and people don’t pay much attention, but if you show them on photographs or in a collection they say, “Oh, they are so beautiful!”

There are different wing pattern with different wing shape. All of a sudden makes people aware of the species.

And number of species as you asked is unknown. It might be some 30,000 to 40, 000.

Charlotte Beauvoisin: Really?

Dr Michael Ochse: Currently there are some 32,000 scientific names on the planet. on a comprehensive scientific website called AfroMothsListed, and we estimate that there might be some 20 to 50 percent more species, actually, it could even be 60 some thousand, so it’s really hard to tell.

[00:07:59] Charlotte Beauvoisin: It’s unbelievable. And then, how many moth species do you estimate there might be in Uganda?

[00:08:05] Dr Michael Ochse: Even this I cannot tell you, but it will be likely some 15, 000. Could be up to 20, 000 or 25, 000, so it will need much more work by the people currently working on it and in future generations to find this out. We don’t even have a complete list of butterflies of Uganda.

In total there are 136 families of moths, only six of butterflies and only very few of these families are defined only on one continent.

[00:08:41] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Wow. That’s mind blowing. Gosh, it’s just impossible, isn’t it? Is there an app that people can use? I know we have PlantNet, we have ebird, we have a number of apps for other species. Do you have anything like that that? That’s an opportunity for somebody somewhere, isn’t it? To create an app to help identify moths and butterflies.

[00:09:02] Dr Michael Ochse: Because right now there’s an initiative to upload to the Afromoth database photographs of all species. And this data collection could be used to develop artificial intelligence, an app which enables people to do, let’s say, guided species identification. But right now it’s not even available for butterflies, which are more accessible and there are identification books.

[00:09:29] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Okay. I appreciate this is an understudied topic. So how many butterflies might you see and how many moths might you see if you were to come to Kibale Forest and you were here for, I don’t know, a weekend.

[00:09:42] Dr Michael Ochse: If you have somebody who’s good in butterflies, could find maybe some 150 to 200 butterflies on a good weekend, when the weather is fine, the sun is shining. But if you go for moths, and many people attract them with the light, it could easily be 300 or 400 species on a good weekend, maybe even 500, right?

[00:10:04] Charlotte Beauvoisin: And this is one of the exercises that we watched you do when you were here before, and it was absolutely fascinating, where you had a small generator, and you fixed up a huge light bulb and a white sheet, and you brought in all kinds of amazing insects.

What’s the name for that?

[00:10:21] Dr Michael Ochse: It’s very often called mothing. Monitoring would it be if you do it regularly on the same spot in order to see if there are changes in species composition and diversity. The term mothing is a very common word for …

[00:10:35] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Is that a hobby name? I mean, it’s not scientific, is it?

[00:10:39] Dr Michael Ochse: Yeah, it’s more a hobby name, but on the other hand, the gradient from pure amateur work to professional work is fluent.

[00:10:45] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Do you describe yourself as an entomologist? I know it’s not your day job.

[00:10:49] Dr Michael Ochse: It’s my passion. So I would call myself an insect enthusiast, a moth enthusiast, a volunteer for this. But this does not prevent me to collaborate with professional people, mostly in public museums, collaborate also with other insect researchers share knowledge, share data, share species.

[00:11:12] Charlotte Beauvoisin: When you were mothing before, I remember seeing all these beautiful moths fly in, and I don’t know much about moths clearly, but I assumed most of them were camouflage colors, browns and grays and perhaps greens. But I was absolutely amazed by the bright pink, the bright yellow, the bright white moths. Can you tell us a bit about those colorings?

What does it mean in the moth world to have a bright color?

[00:11:37] Dr Michael Ochse: So the majority of moths which fly at night are brown or green, which is connected to stem bark or leaves, which gives them a very good camouflage during day for potential predators. But you are right. Quite a number of moths have different colors like red, like yellow, blue, and red might be a very conspicuous color during day because it might be, in many cases, that the moth is distasteful.

[00:12:10] Dr Michael Ochse: But in many, many cases, we don’t know why the color is as it is, because the ecology of the species is not well studied.

[00:12:18] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Have you visited many African countries?

[00:12:20] Dr Michael Ochse: Yes, several of them. Mostly in West Africa, so Ghana, Liberia, Cameroon, and in East Africa, the only country I’ve visited so far is Uganda.

[00:12:33] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Well, we’re honored for that. That’s fantastic.

[00:12:34] Dr Michael Ochse: Because Uganda is very nice for traveling. One is the diversity of landscapes, but the other also that the people here are very nice, very helpful, and they make it very easy for travelers to get around.

[00:12:49] Charlotte Beauvoisin: You mentioned that butterfly tourism is a thing. And it seems to be developing slowly in Uganda. How do you become a butterfly tourist and how do you promote butterfly tourism?

[00:13:02] Dr Michael Ochse: Most people showing first interest in butterflies nowadays photograph them.

[00:13:11] Charlotte Beauvoisin: It is very difficult to identify a butterfly. I found during lockdown, one of the things that kept me sane was walking and walking and walking a bit more there. And I started studying butterflies for the first time. I came to know that there are dry season and rainy season varieties of the same butterfly and there are mimics and there are all kinds of curveballs thrown at you to confuse you and throw you off the scent. How do beginners try and get their head around all these different aspects of butterflies?

[00:13:46] Dr Michael Ochse: I think if you want to do it seriously and get some basic knowledge on it, you need to concentrate on it. So really spend time and focus only on butterflies for a certain period of time. I would say a year, two years while you are here. If you do this more and more after some while, you will remember more and more species, but it’s hard, you know.

If you do this in Great Britain, where you have some 50, 60 species it’s easier done in this forest where there are at least 300 species of butterflies. You can see easily 50 or 60 species here in just a few hours.

[00:14:27] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Yes. I learned about 40 species during lockdown, although I have to say I’ve forgotten a lot of it already by now, but I take your point. You have to keep practicing, don’t you?

[00:14:38] Dr Michael Ochse: And then the unfortunate component of it is that there’s no book at current for butterflies of East Africa or butterflies of Uganda. There’s a book on butterflies of Kenya. There’s a book on butterflies of Central Africa. But on the other hand, there are some 10, 15, maybe even 20 endemic species to Uganda, which are scattered across some scientific papers.

[00:15:06] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Perhaps we should just say: enjoy them.

[00:15:08] Dr Michael Ochse: Yes, sure, you can enjoy them, but you could also photograph them, and some you will remember over time.

[00:15:13] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Yes. And butterflies are quite seasonal, aren’t they? I remember going to a lodge on the edge of Queen Elizabeth National Park one time. It was on the edge of a lake, and it had a swimming pool, and there were hundreds or thousands of butterflies around us, and I associated it with the lodge and then I went back to the lodge a couple of years later and I was really disappointed that there weren’t any butterflies there. I realized it’s tied in with the time of year. Is that dry season, do you think, or rainy season?

[00:15:43] Dr Michael Ochse: The beginning and the end of rainy seasons are very popular to butterflies. Dry season, not so much, because it’s basically too dry for most of the species, also for the females to find the food plant and have fresh food. On the other hand, if you do this during the wet season, you will see plenty of species. But you need sunshine. If it is cloudy the whole day, it makes it more difficult to find many species.

Here in the tropics, even though it’s warm, they prefer flying while the sun is shining.

[00:16:16] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Correct me if I’m wrong, but each butterfly will only eat a certain kind of plant, and that’s just mind blowing because it just shows you that not only do we have a lot of butterflies and moths, if each of those has its own plant, it shows the diversity of plants and trees as well.

[00:16:33] Dr Michael Ochse: I really can’t get my head around that.

[00:16:36] Charlotte Beauvoisin: That’s why we love Uganda, isn’t it? It’s one of the many reasons that people visit here, it’s because of that sheer biodiversity. That brings me on to something I want to know, so people cut down trees in Uganda too much for my liking. Of course, there’s charcoal production, which is something that we all scream about. Everyone in conservation hates. But there’s also, when people build a house, people will often cut down trees, build the house, and then replant. And it really upsets me, because not only is it shade and the climate change impacts, but each tree is an ecosystem in its own right. Can we estimate how many species of insects there might be on a mature tree in Uganda?

[00:17:18] Dr Michael Ochse: Oh, it might be between 100 and 500 different species.

[00:17:24] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Whoa!

[00:17:25] Dr Michael Ochse: On a single tree, yeah. So if you cut a tree, you not only kill the tree, but also all insects living on this tree. But I see the same. The forest here is shrinking and outside of the protected areas. You see only very few large trees, which could give shadow to the people and life also to all the other creatures depending on it.

[00:17:50] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Yeah, I mean, even in Fort Portal in western Uganda, where we are now, there are a lot of trees and the forest and the crater lakes and the Rwenzori mountains. But even locally in Fort Portal, the temperature has gone up by two degrees in the last, I think, 20 years. We need to keep our big trees, desperately need to, because by protecting those insects, of course, we’re protecting everyone else in that chain, aren’t we? The birds and bigger insects.

[00:18:16] Dr Michael Ochse: Yeah, correct. So some older man, interested in natural history, told me that 30 years ago, when he drove through Uganda, the trees were full of lichens hanging from the branches of the trees. But this is not anymore. And the lichens were there because the moisture seemed to have been higher back in these days. And now the moisture is mostly present in dense forest, but not that much anymore outside.

[00:18:47] Charlotte Beauvoisin: I wanted to take you back to Germany and the organization that you work with in a voluntary capacity. You said it’s a natural history organization, but you do a lot more of more conservation these days.

[00:19:00] Dr Michael Ochse: People organized in this club enjoy nature in all its aspects.

[00:19:05] Dr Michael Ochse: There are birders, there are plant experts, there are other people doing butterfly watching.

[00:19:12] Charlotte Beauvoisin: And the name of the organization is?

[00:19:14] Dr Michael Ochse: Pollichia, named after a botanist Johan Adam Pollich, who lived in the 18th century and wrote a book about botany, about the plants of the area in Latin.

[00:19:28] Dr Michael Ochse: I think there’s still a chance to save this planet.

[00:19:32] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Absolutely. I’m an optimist as well. There’s a hashtag, isn’t there? Conservation optimism. When I was studying how to create a podcast and thinking who I wanted to interview and what I wanted to talk about, I started listening to Jane Goodall’s podcast, which is called The Hopecast. And it’s very inspiring and she says in her trailer that she does get depressed like everyone does and things seem a bit overwhelming, but she said, if you look around, there are so many people around the world who have got lots of solutions overall.

She said, I do feel optimistic that we can turn this thing around and that’s why she’s really invested a lot of time in young people. She’s got this Roots and Shoots organisation, she’s got this club.

[00:20:34] Dr Michael Ochse: I know of one group of people is doing a nature conservation club meeting and they start, let’s say, the first ten minutes where everybody has a chance to complain about the situation, but then talking about nature observations people made about positive examples, so that people have the chance to do both: first share the depression with others (which helps get off the chest) but then get off the meeting with a positive spirit to have a good evening thereafter and a good day thereafter.

[00:21:13] Charlotte Beauvoisin: That sounds like a good idea.

[00:21:14] Dr Michael Ochse: Because very often when nature conservators get together, they start complaining the whole time. And I’m also like that (you did with me two days ago). I’m also sometimes say: let’s stop here. I don’t want to hear this anymore because we all know this. It’s not worth repeating it on and on and on. Let’s talk about what we can do to change it.

[00:21:38] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Yeah, let’s try and move on. Absolutely.

[00:21:42] Charlotte Beauvoisin: One of my favorite birds has just started callings. We’re approaching dusk. This is the lead colored flycatcher. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it. But it wakes me up every morning. It’s the first bird. And it wakes me up at 6. 21 without fail every morning. And it’s marking the end of the day now.

[00:22:02] Dr Michael Ochse: But how do you do the identification here of the bird calls?  Is there an app for it?

[00:22:09] Charlotte Beauvoisin: There is an app for that. And of course we have our experts on call. So what we do is we do just a quick recording on the phone and then we share it on WhatsApp.

[00:22:20] Dr Michael Ochse: The people here are very knowledgeable about birds and so on. They are brilliant. Very impressive. And they have a very good sense for observation also. So it’s fantastic.

[00:22:32] Charlotte Beauvoisin: You can’t get bored of that curiosity, can you? I was walking along the forest edge yesterday and I heard birds that I didn’t know, as I said I’m totally amateur. I might recognize a sound without actually knowing how to identify it, but this was completely new to me. And I recorded it and I played it to one of the Sunbird Hill boys and they told me it’s a Jameson’s Wattleye, which is a tick. I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard it, and someone identified it for me. So I’m like, yes, it’s a new bird for me!

[00:23:02] Charlotte Beauvoisin: So maybe you can tell me what we have here, because I came up to take pictures and all I could see is tiny little things, and I don’t know if they’re moths or they’re … now we call these sausage flies.

[00:23:22] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Are they related to termites?

[00:23:24] Dr Michael Ochse: Yes. I learned that they are the queens of termites, right?

[00:23:29] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Yeah. Oh, that’s very pretty.

[00:23:31] Dr Michael Ochse: It’s a plum moth and they are camouflaged like green leaves, leaves with damages.

[00:23:39] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Yes, well it looks like it’s got lichen on it or something.

[00:23:43] Dr Michael Ochse: Yeah, it’s their trick of survival. So, there’s a very high fraction of moths being brown and green. Especially in the tropics, in the tropical forest, many more than in the northern hemisphere. This has all to do with camouflage. This is also camouflage. If you look on the trees very closely, not every tree stem is really brown. So they’re hard. paler ones. And then there are very conspicuous ones, like this here with red coloring. And this is because they feed on poisonous plants and have poison in their body. This prevents them from being eaten. And if you eat it, it might at least be distasteful, not, not really deadly for the predator, but …

[00:24:33] Charlotte Beauvoisin: I won’t be eating one!

[00:24:35] Dr Michael Ochse: No.

[00:24:37] Charlotte Beauvoisin: You have mentioned a couple of new things that you’ve seen on your most recent trip to Sunbird Hill.

[00:24:44] Dr Michael Ochse: Yes. I’ve seen a few moths I’ve never seen before on none of my trips and I do this for 20 years now. For 20 years might be nothing because the continent is so huge and the forest so diverse so they could be new, but I like it if I see something I’ve not seen before.

Because many species you find quite widely distributed across the tropical forest. And then if something comes out which is rarely seen, it makes me excited.

[00:25:20] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Absolutely, yeah. And how many individual creatures do you think we have around us now?

[00:25:26] Dr Michael Ochse: Yeah, so this night there are not many, it’s only very few, hard to estimate, but a few hundred specimens which are sitting here. I saw a cricket, we see these termites, we do see a bug, a beetle is sitting there, flies, so various orders of insects are represented here on the sheet.

[00:25:54] Charlotte Beauvoisin: And I’ve seen a very big insect around here.

[00:25:58] Dr Michael Ochse: There was a praying mantis earlier, and a big long horned grasshopper.

[00:26:13] Dr Michael Ochse: But I’m glad that you don’t find them disgusting, because many people find insects disgusting. Or feel uncomfortable if you’re flying around, scary.

[00:26:25] Charlotte Beauvoisin: I think I did when I was younger. But my sister was fascinated by beetles. I was horrible. When I was at boarding school, we used to have big daddy long legs. You know what I mean? They’re like massive mosquitoes. And I used to catch them. And one of the girls I shared a dormitory with was terrified of them. And I put them in her bed. I thought it was absolutely hilarious. And I would do it all the time. I just loved hearing her screaming. And when we were 11, it was really funny. If somebody did that to me now, I’d be really horrified.

[00:26:56] Dr Michael Ochse: Like this one here. When I first saw it on my first trip in Africa, I was also scared it could sting or something like this, but it can’t. It’s completely harmless. Some people eat them, like they are, from the net.

[00:27:09] Charlotte Beauvoisin: So this is the queen termite?

[00:27:12] Dr Michael Ochse: So she’s the prize.

[00:27:17] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Termites are eating my house, so they’re not my favorite. What’s this here?

[00:27:21] Dr Michael Ochse: A bug.

[00:27:22] Charlotte Beauvoisin: It’s just called a bug? That never feels like a scientific name. I mean, I like it because it’s easy to say and easy to remember.

[00:27:30] Dr Michael Ochse: So bug is, let’s say, an insult for the insect, because I know bugs in English are called any kind of bothering insect. But this insect order is called Heteroptera, which is different from beetles. So its own order of insects.

[00:27:52] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Oh, beautiful. That’s praying mantis.

[00:27:54] Dr Michael Ochse: Yeah. Oh, very beautiful.

[00:27:58] Charlotte Beauvoisin: There’s still so much to learn about all kinds of species. But thank you very much, Michael, for giving us a bit of an insight into butterflies and moths.

Thank you very much for being part of the East Africa Travel Podcast. And we hope to see you on your next trip to Sunbird Hill.

[00:28:14] Dr Michael Ochse: Thank you very much, Charlotte, for this nice interview, also for the hospitality here on this wonderful place, because me and my friend, we made really nice observations of insects here.

[00:28:26] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Brilliant, okay. Thank you very much.

[00:28:28] Charlotte Beauvoisin: Well done for keeping me company as we had hundreds of insects buzzing around our heads. If you enjoyed my conversation with Michael, you might want to check out the organization that he volunteers with. The organization is called Pollichia. I think that’s how you say it. I’m not entirely sure. And the organization is named after a German botanist who wrote a book in Latin about plants. (I told you we were going niche today!)

If you’re interested in learning what we do at Sunbird Hill, check out the show notes. Sunbird Hill is on the edge of Kibale Forest and it raises funds for the conservation NGO in the shadow of chimpanzees.

You’ll also find a link to my Travel Directory where you can find lodges and tour operators that can help you plan a trip to Uganda.

Thanks for listening and please give me your feedback. The success of this podcast relies on you: tell me what you want more of, less of, where should I go, who should I talk to?

You’ve been listening to the East Africa Travel Podcast. My name is Charlotte Beauvoisin, author of Diary of a Muzungu.

See you next week. Bye!