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THIRD MABA EVENT 2026

 

The 3rd MABA event will be held in Canberra, ACT, Australia, 4-6 December 2026. The three-day event will involve six different activities, including a tour of Diversity, the new Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC) building at CSIRO Black Mountain Laboratories, a field trip to subalpine woodland in the Brindabella Ranges to learn about sampling techniques for inventorying and monitoring butterflies, followed by light trapping for moths in the evening, a mini conference, which will include a keynote presentation by Professor Yu-Feng (Frank) Hsu from National Taiwan Normal University and the launch of the newly released Australian Moths: A Natural History, followed by a series of shorter talks, a banquet dinner, and a moth identification workshop. If you want to examine the Lepidoptera collection in ANIC before or after the Event you will need to contact the CSIRO staff directly.

Registration

To register for this event please click on the following link and complete the jotform online. Deadline for registration is 30 September, but we advise that you register as early as possible to ensure you do not miss out due to limited availability of some activities.

 

Tour of ANIC Diversity Building, Friday 4 December 2026 (9.30–10.30 am)

The tour of the new Diversity Building will take place in the morning. Please meet at 9:15 am in the foyer entrance, level 2, Building 803, CSIRO Black Mountain Laboratories, Dickson Way, Canberra. You can enter the CSIRO complex from Clunies Ross St and Julius Rd. At Julius Rd there is a boom gate with intercom. Press the intercom and tell the receptionist that you are visiting Diversity for a guided tour. Car parking is available behind the Black Mountain Library. On arrival you will need to sign in for a name tag. Note, there is limited capacity for this activity, and we can only take up to 60 members.

Field trip: how to survey and monitor butterflies, Friday 4 December 2026 (1.00–4.00 pm)

The butterfly field trip will be held at Mt Franklin in the Brindabella Range, ACT. We will first meet at 12.00 pm at Bulls Head Picnic Area for BYO lunch. The picnic area has a dry area, toilets and BBQ. Bulls Head is 53 km from CSIRO Black Mountain and takes approximately 1 hour drive from Canberra. The road is in good condition and 4WD is not required. After lunch we will car pool and then drive to Mt Franklin carpark, which takes approximately 20 mins from Bulls Head. Your guides will demonstrate standard techniques to survey and monitor butterflies and diurnal moths using transect walks, point counts, and area counts. Please ensure you bring water and sunscreen, and wear sturdy boots and a hat.

 

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Field trip: light trapping for moths, Friday 4 December 2026 (8.00–10.30 pm)

The moth field trip will also be held in the Brindabella Range, ACT. We will meet at 6.30 pm at Bulls Head Picnic Area for BYO dinner. Your guides will set up an array of different light traps. Please ensure you bring water, warm clothes and wear sturdy boots; a hat and/or sunglasses are useful to avoid eye damage from the lights.

Conference, Saturday 5 December 2026 (8.30 am–5.00 pm)

The conference will be held at the Australian National Botanic Gardens, Clunies Ross St, Canberra. The talks will take place in the Theatrette, which can take up to 90 people. Morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea served in the Dickson Room, which is adjacent to the Theatrette—the entire complex is located opposite the Visitors Centre and bookshop. Free carparking is available outside the gardens on Clunies Ross St about 100 m NE from the entrance to the gardens. Second hand books on moths and butterflies will be available for sale. Printed copies of the newly released Australian Moths: A Natural History will be available for purchase (30% discount for MABA members). 

 

Keynote speaker

We are delighted to welcome Professor Yu-Feng (Frank) Hsu from National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan, who will give a presentation entitled The ‘heliodinid sun moth’ associated with Pisonia aculeta: Remarkable disjunct biogeographic distribution or a case of Wallacean shortfall?

The family Heliodinidae represents a group of micro-moths that are commonly known as “sun moths” in North America, although “sun moth” also refers to the other families of moths in the other parts of the world. High taxonomic diversity of the family is found in the New World, but “basal” lineages of the phylogeny occur in the Old World. Among these, the genus Epicroesa is a small genus of sun moth distributed mainly in the tropics or subtropics, but one species is endemic to Japan. The hostplants of Epicroesa are mostly Nyctaginaceae. In the case of Epicroesa moths associated with Pisonia aculeata, an interesting biogeographic conundrum is worthy of investigation. The biogeographic range of this association appears to be amphitropical—known only from tropical Queensland in northern Australia and in the subtropical latitudes of southern Taiwan. These areas of distribution are located approximately 6,000 km apart in different hemispheres! It turns out that the taxonomy of the moth requires clarification, and a plausible explanation for such a vast gap in distribution is needed. Based on morphological examination, study of immature stage biology, molecular data, and niche-modelling, a taxonomic treatment and hypothesis for the disjunct distribution of the P. aculeta-associated Epicroesa will be presented to explain whether this moth represents a real case of amphitropical biogeographical disjunction, or merely an artifact due to insufficient geographical sampling, a situation known as the “Wallacean shortfall”.

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Yu-Feng Hsu (Frank Hsu) was born at a small “Hakka” town called Miaoli in Taiwan in 1963. Frank fell in love with insects in the third grade of elementary school. His undergraduate education involved three different departments, namely forestry, botany, and entomology, and he graduated with a BS in entomology from National Taiwan University in 1987. He became a graduate student in systematic entomology at University of California, Berkeley in 1988, and travelled to many areas, especially deserts, in southern parts of North America to investigate heliodinid moths for his Ph.D. dissertation. His PhD research culminated in a published monograph of these moths in central and north America, in which three new genera and 25 new species were described, many discovered by Frank. After obtaining the doctoral degree, he was appointed to position of professor at two universities in Taiwan. Since then, he has devoted his research to the study of systematics, biology, evolution, and conservation of Lepidoptera. He has published more than 80 scientific papers with impact factors as author or co-author, and has been associated with the publication of 16 books. He won the John Adams Comstock Award from the Pacific Slope Section of the Lepidopterists’ Society for outstanding presentation in 1994 (USA), the Hayashi Award for academic achievement from the Butterfly Society of Japan in 2008 (Japan) and the award of “Distinguished Contributors to Forestry and Nature Conservation” from the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency for commitment on conservation of butterflies in 2023 (Taiwan). Frank currently serves as a Professor at the Department of Life Science, National Taiwan University at Taipei. He is also board member of several societies on research of insects or conservation of wildlife.

Banquet dinner, Saturday 5 December 2026 (7.00–10.00 pm)

The banquet dinner will be held at the China Tea Club, 7 Montford Cres, Lyneham, ACT. The banquet option includes several entrées and dishes (spring roll, gow gee, fried dumpling, chilli beef Peking style, chicken fillets with cashew nuts, mixed vegetables, honey king prawns, pork fillets with vegetables, combination fried rice and steamed rice). However, if you have dietary requirements (vegan, vegetarian, gluten free) you can order your meal separately. There is a cash bar to order alcohol.

Moth identification workshop, Sunday 6 December 2026 (10.00 am–1.30 pm)

The moth workshop will be held in the Banksia Centre at the Australian National Botanic Gardens, Clunies Ross St, Canberra. We will use the Rosser Room and Solander Room and set up a battery powered microscope (x4 magnification) for each participant. At the workshop you will learn how to identify moths to family level. Please bring along your moth specimens for identification, preferably as pinned specimens in a store box. Free carparking is available outside the gardens on Clunies Ross St about 100 m NE from the entrance to the gardens. Note, there is limited capacity for this activity, and we can only take up to 20 participants plus observers.

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FIELD TRIP 2027

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Council is planning to run at least one field trip each year. The inaugural field trip will be held at Eungella, Qld, Australia in 2027, either in April or October/November for 3-4 nights. We are intending to stay at the Broken River Mountain Resort, which can hold up to 28 people for approximately $60-70 per night per person depending on numbers and the time of year. The resort has a restaurant for meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and conference room that can be used for processing specimens, meetings, talks etc, which have additional costs. At this stage we are just seeking expressions of interest to determine approximate numbers and what the overall cost might be. 

 

If you are interested in attending this field trip please contact Marlene Walter <mally.consulting@gmail.com> and indicate: (a) the number of people, (b) preferred time of year (autumn or spring), (c) preferred number of nights. We probably need at least 20 participants to make the trip worthwhile and affordable.

 

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