Clarke, the Christmas critter collector

Charles Edwin Clarke (1885-1952) was an amateur entomologist in New Zealand during early to mid-1900s. He had an enormous fascination for Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) and Coleoptera (beetles). He was a dentist by profession, but like many natural scientists of this time, his entomology work was merely a hobby. An impressive hobby at that, especially for Clarke, who published papers on Lepidoptera and discovered new species in his ‘spare’ time.

Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum has over 5,500 specimens from Charles Clarke, both in our exotic and New Zealand collections. However, this large collection is still being databased to this day. He collected many types of insects from all over New Zealand, Rarotonga, and Queensland.

Charles Clarke was a notable collector; some might say he had an obsession for collecting insects even collecting on Christmas day. His first true love appeared to be that of insects, the hot summer weather would have made it ideal for such bug hunting adventures (…but perhaps may have contributed to him having had multiple marriages).

Over 200 of Clarke specimens within our records were collected on Christmas day, from numerous sites between 1911 to 1946. He collected most of his Christmas specimens around New Zealand (Figure 2). However, also collected from Wentworth, Australia in 1930 and Arorangi, Rarotonga in 1937 on Christmas day.

Australian beetles in Charles. E. Clarke collection.
Phalacrognathus muelleri AMNZ48003 and Xylotrupes australicus AMNZ180361

_{Graphic using Auckland Museum records created in R Statistical Software, v4.3.2; R Core Team 2023.}

This map shows the locations where insects were collected by Clarke on Christmas day from around New Zealand. Including the locality of the following specimens: Mimopeus clarkei (AMNZ13708), Holcaspis angustula (AMNZ89466), and Capua semiferana (AMNZ213708)

During his life he discovered and described a few species of moths including Ericodesma cuneata, Heterocrossa sanctimonea, and Asterivora urbana all of which the holotypes (the specimen used to formally describe the species) are kept at Auckland Museum.

While Clarke was still alive in 1929, he donated his vast collection of New Zealand insects and cabinets to Auckland Museum. In 1952 Clarke died, his second collection of beetles was acquired in 1955-1956 by both Auckland Museum and the British Museum. The collection was large and distributed evenly between the two museums. Many of the species he collected and then donated to the Museum were also studied by the entomologist Alfred Philpot who described new moth species from his collection.

If you have time at all this Christmas, think like Charles E. Clarke and spare a moment to look for some insects running, buzzing, or flying around on this hopefully sunny Christmas day.

Holotype of Heterocrossa sanctimonea (AMNZ21752) at Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Holotype of Asterivora urbana (AMNZ21802) at Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank Grace Yee for the data extracted from Vernon on Charles Clarke. And the photography team, especially Jennifer Carol and Jessie Maucor for imaging some of Clarke's specimens.

References:

Thwaites, I. (2015). A good place to be, Auckland Museum People 1929–1989. PDQ Print, Auckland. ISBN: 978-0473-32932-7. Page 283-284.

Powell, A. W. B., Brooker, S. G., Troup. C. O., Turbott. E. G. (1967) The Centennial History of the Auckland Institute and Museum. Page 73-75.

R Core Team (2023). _R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing_. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. https.//www. R-project.org/

H. Wickham. ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis. Springer-Verlag New York, 2016.

Pebesma, E., & Bivand, R. (2023). Spatial Data Science: With Applications in R. Chapman and Hall/CRC. https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429459016

Massicotte P, South A (2023). _rnaturalearth: World Map Data from Natural Earth_. R package version 1.0.0. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rnaturalearth

South A (2017). _rnaturalearthdata: World Vector Map Data from Natural Earth Used in 'rnaturalearth'_. R package version 0.1.0. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rnaturalearthdata

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, March 4). Category: taxa named by Charles Edwin Clarke. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Taxa_named_by_Charles_Edwin_Clarke

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, September 10). Heterocrossa Sanctimonea. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterocrossa_sanctimonea

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, November 1). Holotype. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holotype

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, November 21). Ericodesma cuneata. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericodesma_cuneata

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, December 4). Asterivora Urbana. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterivora_urbana

Banner image: Photo by Michael Fenton on Unsplash

<i>Capua semiferana</i> image: Watercolour by George Hudson. Plate XXVI. The butterflies and moths of New Zealand. Fig 7. Capua semiferana female. Via Te Papa