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About the Author
Andrew Neild was born in London in
1966, but
spent nearly all of his childhood abroad with his family. After six
years in
Saudi Arabia, followed by four in Spain, he moved to Venezuela in early
1978,
where he remained for three years. Andrew was immediately captivated by
the
magnificent butterflies of the country and resolved to write a
comprehensive
identification guide to the Venezuelan butterflies. After returning in
1981 to
London, his current home, he has revisited Venezuela on numerous
occasions,
accumulating nearly three years of work in the field, principally in
the Andes
and in the remote south of the country. While working on The
Butterflies of
Venezuela he has travelled extensively through the country,
visiting almost
all of the local institutional and private collections. He has also
visited
many of the principal institutional depositories for Neotropical
butterflies in
western Europe and North America. The
author has led numerous butterfly
photography tours to Ecuador and Venezuela, as well as singletons to
Brazil,
Costa Rica, and French Guiana, with additional short visits to Belize,
the
Dominican Republic, and to Guadeloupe. Andrew’s experiences
and diverse
observations of butterflies in all of these countries have supplemented
those
from Venezuela, adding depth and authority to his notes on their
natural
history. Andrew
holds a Master of Arts degree in Latin
from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, is a Scientific
Associate of
the Natural History Museum in London, and a member of the Association
for
Tropical Lepidoptera, Butterfly Conservation, The
Lepidopterists’ Society, and
the Union des Entomologistes Belges. The author married Alice in 1998 in St. Andrews, where they first met as students. Since the birth of their son Jack in late 2003, Andrew has concentrated his attention on caring for his family and completing this book. He hopes to resume his butterfly odysseys as quickly as possible! |