Every year, thousands of insects visit our gardens. While some are purely pests (such as plant lice), and others are pollinators (such as honey bees); there is a group of insects that skirt the knife’s edge between being both pests and pollinators, with the added bonus of being pretty too: Butterflies (and sometimes moths).
The age- old joke of “What do you call a fly without wings? A walk!” is to most just a typical dad-joke. But what many people don’t realise is that flies (Insect order Diptera) have quite a few species that are indeed “walks”.
The earthy ochre tones and dark scrawls in Asanda Kupa’s Chained in blue (2017) evoke a mass of figures united under a banner of resistance. The canvas appears as an eruption of expressive marks and dynamic energy. The piece seems to summon songs and chants for freedom. It is an especially poignant piece in the Artbank of South Africa’s collection. In an interview Kupa describes how, “I use crowds as a symbol of oneness, that everything is connected, and all is one”.
What is Taxonomy?
Biological taxonomy is the scientific discipline of classifying and naming the organisms that compose present and past biodiversity as formal units or entities, the taxa. Its work consists of three steps: (1) the recognition, delimitation, and differential definition (or diagnosis) of the basic discrete units resulting from the evolutionary process (the species), (2) the establishment of a hierarchical classification of these taxa reflecting their evolutionary relationships, and (3) their naming according to nomenclatural rules relying on museum-kept voucher specimens (so-called ‘types’).
In the current era of the internet, social media and online databases together with the development of digital photography, more and more new species and new regional records are discovered by the general public. Plant and animal enthusiasts and photographers are increasingly posting images on platforms such as Flickr, Instagram, iNaturalist, Facebook and Twitter.