There are 30,000 specimens hidden in the freezer in Hengduan Mountain for 15 years
Butterfly specimens in the state of spreading wings
Deng Heli Chasing Butterflies in the Wild
How hard can the retirement life be?
He spent 15 years chasing butterflies in Hengduan Mountain, doing scientific research at his own expense.
Currently, 80-year-old Deng Heli from Yibin, Sichuan, is working with his team to compile and summarize information and prepare to publish an "encyclopedia" on Hengduanshan butterflies.
This encyclopedia includes almost all kinds of butterflies in Hengduan Mountain, and records the location and time of their appearance at the same time.
In Deng Heli's studio, there is a freezer about 1 meter high and 1.8 meters wide, which contains about 30,000 butterfly specimens.
There are about 3,000 specimens of spreading wings in the specimen room next to it.
Surprisingly, when studying butterflies, Deng Heli turned out to be "a monk halfway".
Chengdu Commercial Daily-Red Star News reporter Lin Congtu according to interviewees
Butterfly chasing journey
Over the past 15 years, many butterflies have traveled through 67 counties in the Hengduan Mountains
Before retiring, Deng Heli was a researcher at the Chongqing Natural History Museum; after retiring, due to equipment and economic reasons, he chose to study butterflies and continue his hobby of walking in nature.
With the support of friends, he embarked on a journey of hunting butterflies in Hengduan Mountain.
Hengduan Mountain was chosen because it is a hotspot of biodiversity, and the secret of the origin and differentiation of butterflies may be hidden.
"According to the previous data, there are about five or six hundred species of butterflies in Hengduan Mountain." The first butterfly recorded in Deng Heli's computer was Bifengdie. Captured by shrubs on the river beach between 500m and 1,000m above sea level in Dayugou, Baoxing County, Ya'an, Sichuan.
The last butterfly is a small ring butterfly. It was from 10:30 to 11:30 on August 20, 2020. Deng Heli caught it in a thicket between 500 and 1,000 meters above sea level in Zhuxi Valley, Qingchuan County, Sichuan.
According to Deng Heli, a skilled hand can catch about 15 butterflies a day.
This is because more time is spent looking for butterflies, and the more you get to the back, the more time you spend.
The butterflies collected by the team do not involve the species listed in the National Key Protected Wildlife List.
Some butterfly adults will only survive for dozens of days, making it difficult to be found.
Therefore, even if you have read countless butterflies, team members will still be very excited when they encounter rare species.
The road to catching butterflies has not been smooth sailing.
Once, a group of people set off from Chengdu and just arrived in Zhaotong, Yunnan. The cylinder of a second-hand car was broken and they had to be pulled back for repairs. They had to rent a car to enter the mountain.
"The traffic is much more convenient now. For places where we could only finish a month ago, four or five days may be enough now."
Of the 101 counties involved in the Hengduan Mountain range, they have already completed 67 of them.
The northernmost is Wenxian, Gansu, the southernmost is Mengla, Yunnan; the westernmost is Ruili, Mangshi, and Basu, Tibet, and the easternmost is Dujiangyan, Sichuan.
In 2017, Deng Heli's team settled in Chengdu Wild Fun Habitat Environmental Design Research Institute. With the material and financial support of the institute, they started the indoor work of Hengduan Mountain butterfly research. Currently, specimens are being sorted and classified.
Speaking of the books to be published, Deng Heli said: "Basic scientific research is also scientific research. If there is no foundation, how can we talk about those high-level applications." Deng Heli said that all protection and applications start from the most basic understanding, and this is exactly what The most boring ones often need to be repeated and accumulated over a long period of time.
But for those who like it, 15 years is also very fast.
"If you don't insist on doing it, I'm sorry for the friends who supported me, and I'm sorry for myself."
How to save butterflies
Low temperature and darkness are the key. In addition to adults, pupae also have ornamental value
"The lower the temperature for storing specimens, the better. The operating temperature of this freezer is minus 27°C." Deng Heli said.
Open the freezer and it is full of plastic boxes, each with hundreds of butterflies.
When the butterfly needs to be further studied, the specimens in the freezer will be taken out.
Deng Heli opened the specimen room, except for the "buzzing" sound from the machine, it was pitch black.
"Darkness can maximize the protection of the chemical pigments in the butterfly." Deng Heli said that the "buzzing" sound is the sound of the dehumidifier.
The humidity is not suitable, and the butterfly specimens cannot "spread their wings and fly".
If the humidity is too high, the butterfly wings will sag; if the humidity is too low, the butterfly wings will be too brittle and easy to break.
With the light on, colorful butterfly specimens on the shelf in the herbarium appeared in front of you.
Deng Heli introduced that the color markings on butterfly wings have two causes: chemical color and physical structure color.
Chemical colors are easy to understand, just like pigments; the physical structure is the microscopic structure of the scales on a butterfly's wings, which show different colors when illuminated by light from different angles.
"This is a purple wing butterfly. It looks purple in this way, and it glows with blue light in this way." He introduced while changing the position of the specimen box.
In addition to different colors, Deng Heli is also familiar with all kinds of mimic butterflies that can imitate the environment to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages.
"This is a group of dead leaf butterflies, together, like a pile of fallen leaves. If you look closely, you will find that each is different; this is a swallowtail butterfly, look at its elongated wing tail, is it the same as the long tail feathers of the house swallow? Exactly the same?"
While catching butterflies, Deng Heli and his team are also raising butterflies.
"Everyone thinks that the adult butterfly is beautiful. It may be because you haven't seen the pupa." Deng Heli pointed to the pupa of the large silk butterfly which was hung on white gauze and had an oval shape with metallic luster.
Next to the big silk butterfly chrysalis, is a small finger knuckle-sized golden butterfly chrysalis, covered in emerald green like a jade pendant. "Look carefully, there is a circle of golden thread in the middle."
Deng Heli introduced that butterflies are fully metamorphic insects, and they have to go through four stages: eggs, larvae, pupae and adults in their lifetime.
Butterfly larvae and eggs of various shapes and bright colors are also of high ornamental value.