Photo: Prof. Louis-F. Cassar (Principal Investigator) discussing the paratypes during the presentation at the museum in Mdina, with Mr John J. Borg (Senior Curator) and Mr Aldo Catania (co-investigator in the study)
Over the last four years, Prof. Louis-F. Cassar of the has been carrying out research on selected biomarkers on the island of Lampedusa. The research forms part of a broader study on the biogeography of the central Mediterranean area, which constitutes the focus of Prof. Cassar鈥檚 attention during his current two-year sabbatical.
During the course of research on Lampedusa, a thorough investigation of the taxon belonging to the 'machaon' complex was carried out. A subspecies new to science was described following a rigorous morphometric examination of all four phases of metamorphosis, involving numerous specimens across seasonal broods (Cassar, L-F., Catania, A. & Cotton, A.M. 2023, A new subspecies of Papilio saharae Oberth眉r, 1879 [Lepidoptera: Papilionidae] from Lampedusa, Italy. . Magnolia Press - Open Access). These and other findings associated with on-going research into island biogeography of the central Mediterranean area have wider implications relating to current knowledge on the mechanisms for biotic connectivity during past climatic regimes.
The holotype will be deposited in the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale Giacomo Doria in Genoa, while a number of paratypes will be placed in relevant institutions such as the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in Leiden, the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., and Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Koenig in Bonn. A pair of paratypes of Papilio saharae aferpilaggi was recently presented to Mr John J. Borg, Senior Curator () of the National Museum of Natural History. Mr Borg also participated in the Lampedusa research missions, to which he contributed expertise in ornithology.
