Andrew Neild, FRES

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 England, 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 book series he has travelled extensively throughout 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.

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The author has led numerous butterfly photography tours to Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Peru, 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.

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Andrew holds a Master of Arts degree in Latin from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, is a Courtesy Research Scientist (Lepidoptera) of the Florida Museum of Natural History (Gainesville, USA), a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, has served as Vice President of The Lepidopterists' Society, and is a member of the NABA Scientific Names Committee and of the Association for Tropical Lepidoptera (USA), Butterfly Conservation (UK), and The Lepidopterists’ Society (USA).

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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, writing scientific papers, and completing his books. He hopes to find time to enjoy more of his butterfly odysseys as quickly as possible!

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Publications
For details of The Butterflies of Venezuela book series, please click here

For scientific papers and other publications by the author, please click here.

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Butterfly Tours

For tours led by Andrew Neild, please click here.

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Butterfly Photos
For photos by Andrew of all butterflies seen on tours he has led, please see his Flickr albums here.

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