On the identification
and misidentification of butterflies of the GaroHills
Krushnamegh Kunte1,2, Gaurav Agavekar1,2, Sanjay Sondhi 2,3, Rohan Lovalekar 2&Kedar Tokekar 2
1 National Center for
Biological Sciences, GKVK, Bellary Road, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560065, India, 2Indian Foundation for Butterflies, Bengaluru, 3 TitliTrust, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India
krushnamegh@ncbs.res.in,
krushnamegh@ifoundbutterflies.org (corresponding author)
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o2710.4616-20 | ZooBank:urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:553F36B2-A380-4DFE-A913-57CD8470729E
Date of publication: 26 July 2013 (online & print)
Manuscript details: Ms #
o2710 | Received 16 July 2013
Citation: Kunte,
K., G. Agavekar, S. Sondhi,
R. Lovalekar & K. Tokekar(2013). On the identification and misidentification of butterflies of the Garo Hills. Journal of Threatened Taxa 5(11): 4616–4620; http://dx.doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o3710.4616-20
Copyright:© Kunte et al. 2013. Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. JoTT allows unrestricted use of this article in any medium,
reproduction and distribution by providing adequate credit to the authors and
the source of publication.
Monsoon Jyoti Gogoi reviewed our book on the butterflies of the Garo Hills (Sondhi et al. 2013)
in the 26 June issue of Journal of Threatened Taxa (Gogoi2013). We recognize the generally
positive tone of the review, and also Gogoi’sappreciation of our use of the current and updated scientific names of Indian
butterflies. We also appreciate the
fact that Gogoi highlighted the importance of our
book in documenting and conserving butterflies of the GaroHills, and the user-friendly interface that we have used. However, Gogoisuggested that we have misidentified some of the butterfly images in our book,
attributing them to wrong species. Since more than 50% of the review was devoted to this with detailed
discussion of various species (mis)identifications, it is necessary to set the record straight
by demonstrating that our identifications were correct in every case mentioned
by Gogoi. We will deal with the identifications and names below as well as in
Image 1 in the order in which Gogoi (2013) mentioned
the species. For each species pair,
our correctly identified species are illustrated on the left and Gogoi’s misidentifications are illustrated on the right in
Image 1. Our original field images
may be compared either from the book, on the Butterflies of India website
(http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/history-of-species-pages-on-butterflies-of-india-website),
or in Image 2.
Male Tarucus venosus has a characteristic pale violet-blue
forewing upperside with black discalspots and a broad black margin that is broadest at the tornusand tapers off at the apex (Evans 1932, 1955; Cantlie1962; Image 1). These characters
are clearly visible in our field images. Tarucus indica female is largely brown with blue scales
at the forewing upperside base, and with white and
dark brown spots on the discal and submarginal areas on both wings (Image 1). In male T. indica,
forewing upperside is transparent pale blue, dark
spot at cell-end is usually inconspicuous, and hindwingunderside discal spot in 5 is widely separated from
the post-discal band (Evans 1955; Cantlie1962). Tarucus venosus is not uncommon in NE India whereas T.indica is known only from Afghanistan to western
and southern India, not from northeastern India (Evans 1955). Thus, most of Gogoi’srecords of “T. theophrastus indica”
from NE India should be that of T. venosus,
not T. indica. Indeed, Gogoi’simages from Assam (available on the Flutters website, URL given in Gogoi 2013) closely match the characteristic phenotype of venosus, except that his image marked ‘male’ is
actually a female and the image marked ‘female’ is a male. Moreover, the name combination used by Gogoi, Tarucus theophrastus indica,
is 80 years old (Evans 1932) and has been outdated for 58 years since Evans
(1955) showed indica to be a distinct
species, an arrangement that is widely followed since Cantlie(1962).
Gogoi has correctly identified hisJamides pura,
but our identification of J. pura was also
correct. Our wild-caught specimens
of J. pura (Image 2), which were photographed
and released on the spot with permission from the forest officials, had the
characteristic thread-like black border to forewing upperside,
which contrasts with the black border that increases in breadth towards the
apex in J. celeno (Evans 1932; Image 1). Clearly, Gogoi’sobservations on the seasonal variation in these two species are limited: in our
experience, variation in the wet and dry season forms of both J. celeno and J. pura is
broadly overlapping, although frequency of the dry season forms is apparently
different in the two species. In addition, not only do these two species occur
in the same regions, they also share the same microhabitat in forested areas. The record of J. pura in the Garo Hills is further substantiated by our subsequent
records of the wet season form in March and April (Image 2). Separating the two species in either
seasonal form from the underside alone, which Gogoiattempted, is not possible.
Regarding Heliophorus,
Evans (1932) and Cantlie (1962) had treated indicus as a valid subspecies of epicles, and latilimbata as a synonym of indicus. Gogoi (2013)
relied on this 50- to 80-year old and equally outdated arrangement in his
review. However, Eliot (1963) had shown, based on differences in the structures
of male genitalia, that epicles and indicus are distinct species and he had treated latilimbata as a subspecies of epicles.
Subsequent authors, including us, have widely followed Eliot’s proposal of
listing indicus and epicles as separate species, and treating latilimbataas a subspecies under epicles (further
references at http://yutaka.it-n.jp/lyc4/81520010.html and
http://yutaka.it-n.jp/lyc4/81530001.html). We note that Gogoi had also cited the Global
Lepidoptera Names Index (LepIndex), created by the
Natural History Museum, London (NHM), as a taxonomic source for treating latilimbata as a synonym of H. indicus. LepIndex is a record of the taxon index cards used at the
museum, which are very important and useful historical documents. However, these index cards have not been
updated for butterfly names in decades and therefore they have not incorporated
important taxonomic information and arrangements generated by many of the
museum’s own butterfly taxonomists and prominent visitors. Butterfly naturalists should use the
names and taxonomic arrangements given on LepIndexonly after double-checking them with modern taxonomic references and
resources. One of us (KK) is in
talks with the Lepidoptera curators at the NHM to update the taxonomy of Indian
butterflies as reflected in LepIndex and the
organization of species, subspecies and specimens at the museum.
KK has photographed the
entire Indian portion of Evans’s HesperiidaeReference Collection that is maintained to this day at the NHM. This was the very collection on which
Evans (1949) had based his keys to Hesperiidae. KK has also photographed all the Indian
species and subspecies of Hesperiidae at the NHM,
which was organized at the museum by Evans himself after consolidating various
private and mixed collections housed at the NHM in Evans’s day. Based on a close look at these two
collections at the NHM and the large collection of reference photographs that
KK has taken in these collections, we know that the identification key to Matapa given in Evans (1949) is not very
clear. It is sometimes difficult to
identify species based solely on this key. After comparing our field images with the specimens at the NHM as well
as a careful reading of Evans’s key, we are confident of our identifications ofM. cresta and M. sasivarna. Briefly, M. cresta has prominently much paler forewing underside apex and hindwingunderside base compared to M. druna (Evans
1949; Image 1). This character is
clearly seen in KK’s image that was used in Kunte et
al. (2012) as well as Sondhi et al. (2013).
The characters to distinguish
between Matapa sasivarnaand M. purpurascens, mentioned by Gogoi from Evans (1949), are indeed correct. However, his reading of these characters
on KT’s image is incorrect. As mentioned in Evans’s (1949) key, our specimen ofM. sasivarna had very dark underside with
darker veins, end of abdomen orange, and bluish-green metallic sheen on the
thorax and bases of wings. Image 1
illustrates key differences between the above four Matapaspecies. Our Matapa specimens match the keys
as well as the museum specimens (Kunte et al. 2012; Sondhi et al. 2013).
Similarly,
the difference in the relative distances of black spots in spaces 6 and 7 on
the hindwing underside, which distinguishes Seseria sambara fromS. dohertyi, was correctly mentioned by Gogoi from Evans (1949) [except that Gogoierroneously mentioned spots in spaces 7, 6 and 5; see Evans (1949, pp.
123–124)]. However, Gogoi’s reading of this character in our images was
incorrect: the outer spot in 7 is approximately mid-way between the spot in 6
and the inner spot in 7, as expected for S. sambara but not S. dohertyi (compare with Image
1). Additionally, S. sambara has a narrower white band on hindwing compared to that in S. dohertyi(Evans 1949), as seen in our images from the GaroHills. Incidentally, the two Seseria specimens used in Gogoi’sidentification key on the Flutters website, referenced by Gogoi(2013), are both S. sambara, and not S.sambara and S. dohertyias claimed by Gogoi. The correctly identified images of S.sambara and S. dohertyishowing their distinguishing characters can be seen on the Butterflies of India
website (http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/358-seseria/seseria-sambara#!/sp/1151/Seseria-sambara and http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/358-seseria/seseria-sambara#!/sp/1150/Seseria-dohertyi).
Our Neptis from the Garo Hills may very well be N. namba and not N. ananta,
as Gogoi suggested. We carefully compared both the species
at the time of confirming identifications for the book but could not reach a
firm conclusion about this image. This is because many of the important distinguishing features are not
clear in SS’s photograph, which was the only imagetaken at the time. So we have
tentatively listed the butterfly as N. ananta but
we await further sightings and better images or specimens before we revisit the
identification. We point out that
distinguishing between N. ananta and N. namba is more complex than suggested by Gogoi. Eliot
(1969) has provided a detailed treatment of this species group, which we have
followed for the identification and names of Indian Neptis.
The identification of the
three Indian species of Melanitis is
relatively easy when one has seen the uppersides as
well as the undersides of specimens and when one knows the full range of
variation seen in the three species. However, the identification details of this species group are very
complex and beyond the scope of this rebuttal, they will instead be provided in
KK’s upcoming books on Indian butterflies (see below). We will only state here that we are
intimately familiar with all the known variation in these species from the
hundreds of specimens that we have seen in nature (see some examples on the
Butterflies of India website, http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/427-Melanitis-dp3),
dozens of specimens of each species that we have raised from early stages (URL
as above), and dozens more specimens that we have photographed at the NHM. Therefore we are reasonably certain of
our identification of these three species. As proof, we provide the upper sides
(Image 2) of the specimens of M. phedima and M.zitenius used in our book, and photographed in
the Garo Hills, to compare them with the matching
reference images from the NHM (Image 1). Dozens of our images of M. leda from
the Garo Hils and nearby
regions are available on the Butterflies of India website
(http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/427-Melanitis-dp3-!/sp/503/Melanitis-leda).
Lastly, Gogoidoubted our records of two species from the Garo Hills
as unlikely for this region of northeastern India: Pareronia hippia (misspelled ‘hippai’
by Gogoi) and Hypolimnas misippus (misspelled ‘Hypolimnias’
by Gogoi). Of these, our record of P. hippia is
indeed unconfirmed (“our sighting needs confirmation since this specimen could
not be photographed”, Kunte et al. 2012). However, P. hippia does occur near the Garo Hills and therefore not
unlikely in our study area: Larsen (2004) has mentioned several records from
the neighboring areas in Bangladesh; specifically from
Dhaka, Sylhet, Teliapara,
and Rangamatti (Chittagong Hill Tracts). On the other hand, H. misippus very much occurs not only in northeastern
India but also all the way to Indo-China (Ek-Amnuay2007; Inayoshi 2013; Pinratana& Eliot 1996). Our record of
this distinctive species was based on four specimens that we have seen very
well in the Garo Hills (Kunteet al. 2012), leaving no room for misidentification. We have recorded this
species in several other states of NE India as well.
We take this opportunity to
point out two errors in identification in our paper (Kunteet al. 2012), which we were able to correct in our book after KK and GA’s work
at the NHM from September to November 2012. In the paper we had erroneously used an
image of Hyarotis microstictum Wood-Mason & de Nicéville, 1887 (Small Brush
Flitter) in place of Zographetus ogygia ogygia Hewitson, 1866 (Continental Purple-spotted Flitter). The correctly identified images of both
the species are now available on the Butterflies of India website
(http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/history-of-species-pages-on-butterflies-of-india-website).
Similarly, we had erroneously used an image of the female Charana mandarinus mandarinus Hewitson, 1863 (Sylhet Mandarin
Blue) in place of Neocheritra fabronia fabronia Hewitson, 1878 (Indo-Chinese Pale Grand Imperial). KK had
initially identified RL’s image of C. mandarinusas that of N. fabronia based on the specimen
illustrated elsewhere (Corbet et al. 1992), which was
the only reference image available to us in 2010 and 2011 when KK had done the
species determination. RL was able
to take only the upperside image of his specimen,
from which separation between the two species was previously difficult. After his work at the NHM in late 2012,
KK revisited this identification and this time determined RL’s image to be that
of C. mandarinus based on the very subtle
differences, clear in our reference images, on the upper side that separate
these two species. These differences have never been satisfactorily illustrated
before, and only inadequately described in literature. Therefore, we provide the images of uppersides of these species (Image 1) for the benefit of
the larger butterfly-watching community. The undersides of these species are,
of course, distinct and have been clearly illustrated elsewhere (Kunte et al. 2013). Both the species (Z. ogygia and C. mandarinus) have been represented in our book with
correctly identified images.
We would like to end by
pointing out that our recent identifications of Indian butterflies are based on
not only all the historical literature and taxonomic keys, which we have
extensively referenced for our various works in the past few years, but also on
approximately 25,000 reference images of museum specimens from the NHM and the
Museum of Comparative Zoology (Harvard University, Cambridge). These materials are currently being
prepared for print publication in the form of two comprehensive books and
online publication on the Butterflies of India website (http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/)
so that they are widely accessible to all. On the other hand, most of the image identifications and scientific name
combinations used on currently available non-peer-reviewed web-resources such as
Flickr and the Flutters website, referenced by Gogoi,
are based on 60 to 100 years old literature (examples cited by Gogoi 2013). Large sections of this old literature are either taxonomically outdated
or scientifically inadequate in light of the academic developments in the past
decades. So we agree with Gogoi that caution is indeed required in the identification
of Indian butterflies from difficult species groups. However, we have demonstrated our
extreme caution and meticulous attention to detail in species identification
and taxonomic validity with our track record on these matters in our recent
publications and the Butterflies of India website. We hope that Gogoiand other young, promising Indian butterfly naturalists and biologists will
follow suit in their identifications, writings and scientific publications with
careful work in the future.
As of now, we know of no
misidentifications in our book, with the potential exception of the Neptis ananta-N. namba species pair (see
above). If any misidentifications are discovered in the future, they will be
listed, along with correct identifications and reference images, on the
webpages of this book on the Butterflies of India
(http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/bibliography/publications-butterflies-of-the-garo-hills)
and the Titli Trust (http://www.titlitrust.com/Garo_Hills_Book.html)
websites. As always, we welcome well-articulated constructive criticism and
comments from all, and we will be happy to learn from others.
References
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