ENHG Lecture: Butterflies of the UAE by Binish Roobas

**This lecture will take place on Zoom. Kindly register on the site, and the link will be sent to you prior to the lecture.

About the talk: Around 58 different butterfly species have been counted to date in the United Arab Emirates. Binish Roobas has studied butterflies in the UAE extensively, and has contributed numerous new butterfly sightings. His latest find was a Himalayan species, the Indian Fritallary (Argynnis hyperbius), in Wadi Wurayah, Fujairah, which was possibly the first record in all of the Arabian Peninsula. Binish’s talk will be an introduction to his upcoming book, “Butterflies of the UAE,” and will cover the different families with their recorded species and how to identify them, as well as insights into their ecology, including feeding habits, migration, host plants, life cycles and behavior.

About The Speaker: Binish Roobas took his degree in Zoology at University of Kerala, where he was a naturalist guide. During his time in the UAE, he has worked as a zoologist and supervisor at the butterfly House in Sharjah. He has also pursued his interests as a naturalist and photographer, sharing his efforts through regular short reports and photographs in the monthly newsletter of the Dubai Natural History Group (Gazelle), longer papers in the periodic journal of the Emirates Natural History Group, Abu Dhabi (Tribulus), occasional short talks, and as a leader of natural history field trips in the UAE and abroad.

Binish has done several years of intensive field work in diverse habitats in different Emirates. While primarily focused on insects, Binish contributed to the recognition and study of several rare species of UAE wildlife, notably Walton's mudskipper and Bosk's fringe-toed lizard.

Binish was honoured for his contributions to the knowledge about the UAE´s Natural History with the 2016 Sheikh Mubarak bin Mohammed Award for Natural History, established by Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak, Minister of Culture and Knowledge Development.

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