Austin, Texas, is home to about 170 species of butterflies. It is also the home of the Austin Butterfly Forum, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to butterfly conservation and to enriching people's lives through butterflies. The Austin Butterfly Forum is a club that organizes field trips, conducts butterfly counts, promotes native gardening, performs conservation activities, and meets monthly for an educational presentation. We are a community of butterfly enthusiasts who also enjoy dragonflies & damselflies, bees, beetles, spiders and arthropods in general, and our meeting presentations span this gamut as well. Join Us!

Luna Moth by Valerie Bugh

Meetings are held in the Zilker Garden Center, 2220 Barton Springs Rd., Austin, TX, 78746 at 7:00 PM on the fourth Monday of each month except December.

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Sept. 25, 2017, 7 PM meeting: Insects Unlocked, presented by Alejandro Santillana.

Insects Unlocked is a public domain project from The University of Texas at Austin’s Insect Collection (UTIC). In 2015, our team of student and community volunteers crowd-funded a campaign to create thousands of open, copyright-free images. From more than 200 small contributions, we built an insect photography field kit and photo studio.

Alejandro Santillana is a recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, with an undergraduate degree in Biology: Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior. Alejandro’s introduction to insect photography and macrophotography took place as volunteer to the UTIC under Dr. Alex Wild. Alejandro is also an avid birdwatcher and field herpetologist, and spends half his time chasing wildlife across Texas and the United States, and the other half reading about them.

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Oct. 23, 2017, 7 PM meeting: Moths: The Mysterious Majority, presented by Valerie Bugh.

Of about 2000 species of lepidoptera found in the Hill Country, only 150 are butterflies. Moths are far more numerous and diverse than butterflies, including more varied lifestyles, far greater size range, and some rather surprising survival strategies. This program will cover both caterpillars and adults, identifying the major families as well as some oddities, and a look at the beauty of these often overlooked insects.

Val Bugh is a local naturalist specializing in the arthropods of the Austin area, with interests in taxonomy and photography. She runs the Fauna Project at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, leads insect discovery walks, teaches entomology courses, provides insect/spider identifications, gives talks to local organizations, and has published pocket guides to "Butterflies of Central Texas" and "Spiders of Texas." Website: Austin Bug Collection