Background Information

The pages of Trauermantel.de are maintained and expanded by me in my spare time. The entire website is deliberately advertising-free. I bear the costs for hosting the pages privately.

The number of interested readers of Trauermantel.de will probably be of a manageable size. What are the reasons for me to still spend a comparatively large amount of time maintaining Trauermantel.de?

As the butterfly has naturally not been found where I live in Bonn, GermanyBonn for many decades, as an amateur lepidopterist I was interested in the causes. I came across a lot of interesting information that I wanted to make available to other people.

Working on Trauermantel.de gives me a lot of pleasure and is varied, as I do all the design and programming work as well as the content.

Another reason:

I get free information from the Internet every day. In return, I would also like to provide free information, even though large parts of the Internet have been cluttered with omnipresent, penetrating and annoying advertising over the years in my opinion.

Does everything always have to be apparently free of charge?

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In principle, Trauermantel.de is only partially a work of its own in terms of content. Rather, it is a summary or an excerpt of the work of many other people.

n most cases, I have indicated the sources of the information I have listed. Some sources can be viewed directly via a link. Other sources can be purchased, e.g. in bookshops.

Please support the development of further knowledge by purchasing these books!

In most cases, I refrain from interpreting the information I have researched, although the selection or summarisation of information I have made is of course also a form of interpretation and will therefore not always be without error. Although I have enjoyed a scientific education, this did not relate to the field of biology. For this reason, too, the information on Trauermantel.de will not always be error-free.

I would be very grateful for any comments, criticism and suggestions for improving Trauermantel.de. I dare you!

An abundance of positive and critical comments, the helpful support of my work, e.g. from museums, and the many photos and videos sent/given to me motivate me to continue with my small private project alongside my job, family and various other hobbies.

I was very pleased to see that Trauermantel.de is now also cited as a source in Wikipedia articles.

Image Detail Page

Although my private photo archive now contains a considerable number of photos of butterfly eggs, caterpillars, pupae and butterflies, there are only a few photos of the Camberwell BeautyNymphalis antiopa (Linnaeus, 1758)Mourning CloakCamberwell Beauty.

One reason for this is that the butterfly has been absent here in the Rhineland for decades, but I have also had little luck when travelling.

If you have recordings of the Camberwell BeautyNymphalis antiopa (Linnaeus, 1758)Mourning CloakCamberwell Beauty, I would be very happy if I could incorporate one or the other picture or video into the pages of Trauermantel.de.

Of course, if desired, together with your name and a link to your homepage or website.

Please also support the scientific work on the Camberwell BeautyNymphalis antiopa (Linnaeus, 1758)Mourning CloakCamberwell Beauty and report sightings to monitoring portals such as science4you.

The pages of Trauermantel.de are originally written in German.

DeepL - Translator and LEOs Wörterbücher were primarily used to translate the pages from German to English.

Even the most intensive research still leaves questions unanswered.

Questions that I have asked myself, but to which I have not found an answer or only an unsatisfactory answer so far, or to which I am currently working on an answer, are specially labelled, e.g:

The question of life, the universe and all the rest

If you have an answer to a question or would like to ask a question yourself, please let me know and I will include the answer or question - with a reference to the author if you wish.

I would particularly like to thank the friendly library staff at the Museum Alexander Koenig, GermanyMuseum Alexander Koenig, who were a great help to me with my research, especially in the initial phase of Trauermantel.de.

Thanks also to the many photographers of the photos and videos included. Each of them has given their consent for their photos to be used on the pages of Trauermantel.de. A list of all authors can be found in Photographers.

I would particularly like to emphasise Gerd LintzmeyerGerd Lintzmeyer, without whose many beautiful mourning cloak photos and videos the pages of Trauermantel.de would have been quite bare in the initial phase.

Many thanks to Mrs Ursula RoerUrsula Roer for the donation of publications by her late husband Hubert Roer (1926-2002)Hubert Roer Roer, 1981 - Massenwechsel-Untersuchungen an einer Südosteuropäischen Population von Nymphalis antiopa (Lep.: Nymphalidae). Hubert Roer (1926-2002)Hubert Roer worked at the Museum Alexander Koenig, GermanyMuseum Alexander Koenig and was, among other things, a passionate Camberwell BeautyNymphalis antiopa (Linnaeus, 1758)Mourning CloakCamberwell Beauty researcher. Mrs Ursula RoerUrsula Roer told me a lot of interesting things about his work - much of which she was directly or indirectly involved in.

Dieter StüningDieter Stüning, who also worked at the Museum Alexander Koenig, GermanyMuseum Alexander Koenig, kindly provided me with a complete set of breeding photos of the Camberwell BeautyNymphalis antiopa (Linnaeus, 1758)Mourning CloakCamberwell Beauty's he took for the pages of Trauermantel.de. The quality of these images is in a class of its own. In addition, Mr Dieter StüningDieter Stüning gave me access to the extensive butterfly collection of the Museum Alexander Koenig, GermanyMuseum Alexander Koenig.

Jürgen HensleJürgen Hensle pointed out some errors in the content, which I was happy to correct. In addition, he also contributed interesting information about other migratory butterflies, e.g. the Red AdmiralVanessa atalanta (Linnaeus, 1758)Pyrameis atalantaRed AdmirableRed Admiral and the Painted LadyVanessa cardui (Linnaeus, 1758)Cynthia carduiCosmopolitanPainted Lady.

Joseph BelicekJoseph Belicek has added a lot of information about taxonomy and nomenclature, especially everything about the group of Deutsch: Eckfalter, Zackenflügelfalter, EckflüglerAnglewing butterflies. Together with Norbert KondlaNorbert Kondla, he has helped to expand large parts of Trauermantel.de. It is Norbert KondlaNorbert Kondla's initiative that the sections on prepared moths in particular have been built up to a high quality. Many of the photographs there are his work.

The pages of Trauermantel.de are implemented as HTML-5/CSS-3.0 in UTF-8 format according to the Mobile First philosophy. The use of JScript was largely dispensed with.

Exception: The pages with map displays use the JScript library OpenStreetMap to display the OpenLayers maps.

The realisation of Trauermantel.de is carried out with a completely self-programmed content management system.

The .NET framework was used for this (C#, ASP.NET Core MVC).

Cookies are not used.

International fonts or character sets are used for some pages of the website, e.g. to display Japanese or Chinese characters (mainly in Colloquial Names).

It is possible that you have to explicitly install these fonts or character sets on your computer, as otherwise no display is possible. Otherwise, the characters will simply be displayed as boxes, for example.