Michael Fibiger 1945 - 2011

Esperiana Band 16: 7-38 Schwanfeld, 06. Dezember 2011 ISBN 978-3-938249-01-7 Michael FIBIGER 1945 - 2011 Our dear friend and colleague, Michael FIBIGER, died on 16 February, 2011, peacefully and in the presence of the closest members of his family. For close on 18 months he had battled heroically and with characteristic determination against a particularly unpleasant form of cancer, and continued with his writing and research until close to the end. Michael was born on 29 June, 1945, in Hellerup, a suburb of Copenhagen, and began catching moths at the age of nine, particularly in the vicinity of the summer house where they stayed on the north coast of Zealand. By the time he was 11, he wanted to join the Danish Lepidoptera Society but was told he was too young and must wait “a couple of years”. So, exactly two years later he applied again and was accepted – as the youngest-ever Member of the Society. Michael always knew he wanted to be a teacher, and between 1965 and 1970 he attended training college at Hel- lerup Seminarium. Having graduated, he taught Danish, Biology and Special Education at Gentofte School until 1973. In the meantime, he studied Clinical Psychology at the University of Copenhagen from 1970 to 1976, and from 1973 to 1981 he became School Psychologist for elementary schools and high schools in the municipality of Gentofte, work which involved investigation and testing of children with psychiatric problems, counselling, supervi- sion and therapy. He was also an instructor in drug prevention for the Ministry of Education. From 1981 to 1988, Michael was Vice Deputy for the County Psychologist in the county of Western Zealand. and was involved in adult education in psychology and theory of education, and in a supplementary job in the Department of Leadership, Address of the author: Barry GOATER, „The Ridge”, 27 Hiltingbury Road, Chandler´s Ford, Eastleigh, Hants, SO53 5 SR, England. E-mail: [email protected] 7 giving individual and group coaching and training for leaders at all levels. Between 1992 and 1999, he was Chief Psychologist for Køge and Vallø municipalities, heading a staff of 64, and was administrative and professional head for school psychologists in the two municipalities. In 1999, he joined the Employees’ Health Service (BST) in Køge for factories and businesses. From 1988, he was external consultant and lecturer at the Danish Organisational High School, Management Education. Department of Leadership. Amid this busy life, he attended numerous courses associated with his professional work, while still finding time for his hobby, entomology. In 1969, Michael had the great good fortune to meet Mariann, whom he married in 1971. She remarks that he was always collecting at the time and that she spent many a cramped night in the back of a Morris Minor while Michael put up his light on moors and in forests, adding wryly that she supposes she thought he was worth it! Their first son, Ulrik, was born in 1974 and Christian in 1978, and they all went abroad together in 1985, when Christian was seven years old. In his youth, Michael worked hard at the lepidopterous fauna of his own country, and his first contribution to the Danish Society’s journal, Lepidoptera, in 1968, was to record Aegeria (now Sesia) melanocephala new for Denmark. This clearwing moth is notoriously difficult to locate. The larva inhabits dead side-branches of aspen (Populus tremula) and finding it requires the patience and diligence characteristic of its discoverer. Later, Michael not only found new Noctuidae, including Chersotis cuprea and Cucullia lucifuga, in Denmark, but also the Geometridae Chloroclysta latefasciata and Scopula emutaria. He was interested in the genus Eupithecia, too, and discussed the relationships of the taxa absinthiata with goossensiata and innotata with fraxinata. In 1974, with N.P. KRISTENSEN, he wrote The Sesiidae (Lepidoptera) of Fennoscandia and Denmark. This small book is of profound significance to me, because after its publication I wrote to Michael about Synanthedon scoliaeformis and was astonished to find, in his prompt reply, that he had been about to write to me on Noctuidae! Thus began the friendship between myself, the tyro, and Michael, the guru, that lasted until his untimely demise. Our first actual meeting was at the SEL Congress in Wageningen, Netherlands, in April, 1985. By then, Michael was doing a lot of collecting in Greece, at that time very under-worked, special- ising in Noctuidae and planning in his mind what was to become his magnum opus, a series of books on the Noctuidae of Europe. After Greece, Turkey became his main collecting region where, while appreciating the hospitality of the locals, he nevertheless experienced some hair-raising events near the Iranian border. He also managed collecting trips to Spain, Sicily, Crete and elsewhere, and latterly to Nepal, Vladivostok and Yemen, the last another rather “hairy” experience. Noctuidae Europaeae was conceived as a twelve volume guide to the identification of all the European species, with comments and maps of their distribution, but largely omitting details of their life cycles which were, in any case, mostly unknown. At the time, the taxonomy of the family was in a state of flux, and he decided to use the “traditional” sequence, starting with Euxoa and the rest of the Noctuinae and ending with Hypeninae and Herminiinae. Figures of genitalia, except for those of the “critical” species, were omitted and the text was planned in two columns, one in English, the other in French, but the latter was discontinued after the first three volumes.. The whole project was supported by a grant from the Carlsberg Foundation. Michael himself had written the first two volumes on Noctuinae, published in 1990 and 1993, by the time it became apparent that the x and w genitalia of all species should be figured, wherever possible. Therefore Volume 3, which came in 1997, consisted mainly of excellent photographs of genitalia preparations, mostly made by the author, and of certain taxonomic revisions and descriptions of newly discovered species. In all subsequent 8 volumes the genitalia were illustrated, and David Wilson not only produced the first class photographs of the imagines which embellish every volume but also made the exquisitely delicate drawings for the front covers. The 1990’s heralded an explosion of interest in the phylogeny of the Lepidoptera which, together with exten- sive revisions of their classification, had considerable influence on the evolution of Noctuidae Europaeae. While Michael remained Editor in Chief, other specialists were called upon, when ready, to deal with their own groups. Vols 6, Cuculliinae I (1994) and 7, Cuculliinae II (1995) written by G. and L. RONKAY came next, then Vol. 5, Hadeninae II, by L. RONKAY, J.-L. YELA and M. HREBLAY in 2001 and Vol. 4, Hadeninae I by H. HACKER, L. RONKAY and M. HREBLAY in 2002. Michael himself returned as one of the authors of Vol. 10, Catocalinae and Plusiinae, 2003, with A. ZILLI and L. RONKAY in Vol. 8, Apameini, 2005 and with H. HACKER in Vol. 9, Am- phipyrinae – Xyleninae, 2007. Vol. 11, Pantheinae – Bryophilinae, appeared in 2009, with Michael again in co-authorship with L. RONKAY, A. STEINER and A. ZILLI. The final volume, Rivulinae – Euteliinae, Micronoctuidae and Supplement to Vols 1-11, was published in 2010. On 21 January, 2011, a grand Reception for Michael was held to celebrate the completion of what was regarded as his life’s work. After the butterflies, the Noctuidae are undoubtedly the most popular of all the Lepidoptera and much, but by no means all of what went into Noctuidae Europaeae was already known. However, among the many small Lepidoptera collected by Michael and presented to the Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen, the sharp-eyed Ole KARSHOLT recognised a specimen taken by Michael in Turkey in 1986 as a minute noctuid. Thus began what surely became by far the greatest contribution to the science of Lepidopterology in recent times. Having located specimens of Micronoctua karsholti FIBIGER, 1997, as this species became known, from the Greek islands of Samos, Cos, Rhodes and Crete as well as Turkey, Michael began a systematic search for more of these tiny noctuids, during which he combed the collections of un-named “Microlepidoptera” in museums up and down the World and extended his own collecting activities further afield. The results were astonishing. Between the years 2007 and 2010, Michael described a new family, Micronoctuidae, six subfamilies, eight tribes, 38 genera, four subgenera, 200 species plus another 14 in co-authorship, and one subspecies. In the months before he died, Michael was preparing another important paper on Micronoctuidae, in which he described two more new subfamilies, 13 new genera, 82 new species and two new subspecies. His col- leagues saw that it was published shortly after his death, in April 2011. He was also at work with Hermann HACKER on the first part of a treatise on the African Eublemminae, with about 20 more new species, which has yet to be completed and published. Michael was involved with other projects. He was Editor-in-Chief of Noctuidae Sibiricae by Vladimir KONONENKO, the first volume of which, An Annotated Check List of the Noctuidae (s.l.) (Insecta, Lepidoptera) of the Asia part of Russia and the Ural Region, came out in 2005, followed in 2010 by the second volume in a planned series of four, which covers Micronoctuidae and Noctuidae from Rivulinae to Agaristinae. He contributed to The 9 Lepidoptera of Europe: a Distributional Checklist, edited by O. KARSHOLT and J. RAZOWSKI. With D. LAFONTAINE, he wrote A review of the higher classification of the Noctuoidea (Lepidoptera) with special reference to the Holarctic fauna (Esperiana 11 (2005), and in the same volume, with H.

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