Exhibit of the Month is a series initiated by the Jagiellonian University Museum with the beginning of the new academic year. Each month we will explain the Museum collection to you, choosing a single exhibit or a group of exhibits which usually are not shown to the open public. This month's feature is a recently discovered butterfly species from the collection of the Nature Education Centre, named after the famous astronomer.

Catasticta copernicus is a new species of butterfly recently discovered in Peru. It is found at the forest edge in the Andes at an altitude of about 3,500 m above sea level. The males are strongly territorial and chase other insects away from where they wait for the females. They take optimal positions above tree crowns or over sharp mountain ridges and actively guard them during the night.

Four specimens of Catasticta copernicus (three males and one female) are held in the collection of the Jagiellonian University's Nature Education Centre while a further 11 specimens belong to other collections in Europe. The first specimens were collected in 2021 in central Peru by a scientific expedition organised by Christer Fåhraeus of Lund University (Sweden). Prof Tomasz Pyrcz from the Institute of Zoology and Biomedical Research at the Jagiellonian University also participated in this expedition. The researchers explored a particularly inaccessible area of the Andes. Reaching previously unexplored locations required the use of a helicopter and the involvement of the Peruvian army. Many other butterfly species from different taxonomic groups were discovered during the survey. The species Catasticta copernicus was described in the scientific journal Zootaxa by a team of authors, including three employees of the Jagiellonian University.

The article is based on press material available on the website of the Nature Education Centre.