by Georg Eberhard Rumpf. Rumpf was a naturalist and in the course of his work for the Dutch East India Company had collected Indonesian shells, rocks, fossils and sea animals. Merian, and possibly her daughter Dorothea, helped to compile illustrations of the specimens for the book, as Rumpf went blind from glaucoma and continued work on the book with assistants until 1690. It was published in 1705. The exotic specimens on display in Amsterdam may have inspired her to travel to Surinam, but only interrupted her study of European insects briefly. Merian continued her collection and observation activities, adding plates to her Caterpillars books and updating the existing plates. She republished the two volumes in Dutch in 1713 and 1714 under the title Der Rupsen. She extended her studies into flies and rewrote the preface to her books to eradicate any mention of spontaneous generation. She explained that flies emerged from a caterpillar pupa, and suggested that flies could thereby be born from excrement. The 50 plates and descriptions of European insects that appear to have been intended for a third volume were published after her death by her daughters, who combined them with the 1713 editions to one large volume. A number of Metamorphosis editions were also published posthumously by her family, to which 12 additional plates were added. All but two appear to have been Merian's work. Merian was described as lively, hard working and courteous by a visiting scholar in 1711. Her house was full of drawings, insects, plants, fruit, and on the walls were her Surinam watercolours. Shortly before Merian's death, her work was seen in Amsterdam by Peter the Great. After her death in 1717, he acquired a significant number of her paintings, which to this day are kept in academic collections in Saint Petersburg. Eponyms Long after her death a number of taxa, and two genera, were named after her. Three butterflies have been named after her, in 1905 a form of a split-banded owlet butterfly Opsiphanes cassina merianae; in 1967 a subspecies of the common postman butterfly Heliconius melpomene meriana; and in 2018 a rare butterfly Catasticta sibyllae from Panamá. The Cuban sphinx moth has been named Erinnyis merianae. A Tessaratomidae bug has been named Plisthenes merianae. A genus of mantises has been named Sibylla. Also the orchid bee Eulaema meriana. The bird-eating spider Avicularia merianae was named in her honour, referencing her