Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 October
2019 | 11(13): 14777–14779
First records of the
ghost moth genus Palpifer Hampson,
[1893] (Lepidoptera: Hepialidae) from the Indian
subcontinent south of the Himalaya
Siyad A. Karim 1 & John R. Grehan 2
1 Simi Manzil, Vettipuram
Road, Pathanamthitta, Kerala 689645, India.
2 Research Associate,
McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity,
Florida Museum of Natural History, 3215 Hull Rd, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
1 siyadhakarim10@gmail.com, 2 calabar.John@gmail.com (corresponding author)
doi: https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.4955.11.13.14777-14779
|
ZooBank: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:41D8321F-BF72-48EF-91D8-D9DE4899413B
Editor: Sanjay Sondhi, Titli Trust, Dehradun,
India. Date of publication: 26 October
2019 (online & print)
Manuscript details: #4955 | Received 15 March 2019 |
Final received 02 October 2019 | Finally accepted 12 October 2019
Citation: Karim, S.A. & J.R. Grehan (2019). First records of the ghost moth
genus Palpifer Hampson, [1893] (Lepidoptera: Hepialidae) from the Indian subcontinent south of the
Himalaya. Journal of Threatened Taxa 11(13): 14777–14779. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.4955.11.13.14777-14779
Copyright: © Karim & Grehan 2019. Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License. JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and
distribution of this article in any medium by adequate credit to the author(s)
and the source of publication.
Funding: None.
Competing interests: The authors declare no competing
interests.
Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Rison Thumboor
(Tumboor, India) and Mebin Varghese (Elanthoor) for providing locality
records and information, and to David Lees (Natural History Museum, United Kingdon, London) for the photo of Palpifer
taprobanus
Ghost moths are distributed over
most of the world where suitable habitats are present and the family is
globally represented by about 77 genera and 600 species. The family is of general phylogenetic
interest because it is the largest of the families basal to many of the more
diverse and derived lepidopteran lineages (Regier et
al. 2015). The global geographic
diversity of Hepialidae is concentrated in the
general regions of central and South America, Australasia, and eastern
Asia. The Indian subcontinent and Sri
Lanka have a smaller diversity of only three genera – Endoclita,
Palpifer, and Hepialiscus
with about 26 species. These genera are
also widespread across other parts of eastern Asia (Grehan 2011). Within India, the most geographically
restricted genus is Hepialiscus, which
is not recorded outside the Himalaya or its immediate vicinity (Grehan & Ismavel 2017). The
most well-known genus is Endoclita, which
comprises larger-bodied moths and species in India. There are at least seven species of Endoclita known from the Western Ghats, one
from Sri Lanka, and a further 11 species from northern India, mostly in the
northeast (Grehan & Mielke 2017; Grehan & Ismavel
2017). It is very likely that further
species of Endoclita remain to be described as
other distinct specimens from southeastern India have
been reported to JRG.
In contrast to the widespread
occurrence of Endoclita, records for Indian
and Sri Lankan Palpifer have previously been
limited to five species along the Himalayan region and a single species from
Sri Lanka (Hampson 1893, 1896; Grehan & Ismavel
2017). This is a surprising distributional
gap since much of western and southern India supports forested areas that would
seem to provide suitable habitat. It is
likely that this distributional gap represents a collecting artifact
as the moths are small (wingspan less than about 33mm) and lack prominent wing
markings. Palpifer
species are also rarely reported as agricultural pests. This expectation of a collecting gap was
recently demonstrated for southeastern Asia with the
description of two new species from Malaysia and northern Laos, respectively. And some locality records for the
distribution range of Palpifer are limited to
personal communications or photographic records only (Grehan & Mielke
2019).
The new record of Palpifer in subcontinental India was made of a live
individual (Image 1) that flew into a house on 21 March 2017. This occurred in a residential area
interspersed with trees and shrubs and located about 10–12 km from the nearest
forests. SAK photographed the moth at
about 22.00h under conditions of light rain, which is typical for collecting
many hepialids. Pathanamthitta is located on the lower slopes of the Pandalam Hills that form part of southern Western Ghats, a
region that includes the Ranni Forest Division and
Konni Forest Division that is the state’s first reserve forest. The forests mostly comprise evergreen, semi
evergreen and moist deciduous trees.
Rubber and teak plantations are also very common. There are many species (mostly odonates and ants) newly described from these reserves.
Identification of the
moth as a species of Palpifer was confirmed by
the diagnostic dark chocolate brown forewings, the large white basal spot and a
dark spot at the center of the posterior wing margin
(Grehan & Mielke 2019). Another
notable feature of the live specimen is the dorsal arching of the posterior
abdomen, which might only occur in males.
This behavior occurs to some extent in various
other resting Hepialidae, but is particularly
noticeable in Palpifer (Grehan &
Mielke 2019). This record also came to
public attention in The Hindu newspaper
(https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/student-stumbles-upon-new-moth-species/article26156090.ece)
Two other Palpifer
live individuals have also since been observed in Kerala State, at Thumboor on 1 December 2017 by Rison Thumboor
(pers. comm. 06 December 2017) (Image 2), and at Elanthoor
in January 2018 by Mebin Varghese (pers. comm. 29
January 2018). The Elanthoor record is
located within an area of residential housing interspersed with forested
patches while Thumboor also includes a mixture of
farmland, housing, and forested patches.
These records altogether indicate that Palpifer
is widespread in Kerala, and likely also to be present across much of the
southern Indian continent along the Western Ghats and surrounding lowlands, and
perhaps also the Eastern Ghats where suitable habitat is present. The Kerala records also suggest that Palpifer is able to persist in residential
areas in southern India, at least where adequate vegetation cover is
present. Species of Palpifer
in other parts of Asia appear to all occur in areas with forest climates
ranging from tropical (India, Sri Lanka, southeastern
Asia) to temperate (northern China, Korea, Japan) (Grehan & Mielke 2019).
The March and December records
coincide with the beginning (March) and end (December) of the monsoon season (https://en.climate-data.org/asia/india/kerala/pathanamthitta-34524/ last accessed 09 March 2019). This periodicity is not surprising for moths
where eggs drop to the ground and may not survive excessive or prolonged ground
water and flooding although they require high humidity to successfully
enclose. The early instars most likely
live among plant debris and humus on the surface of the ground before tunneling into the soil to feed on host plant roots as this
pattern of development is widespread among Hepialidae
(Grehan 1989). It is very possible that Palpifer is an unrecognized agricultural pest
in southern India. Larvae are
subterranean root feeders of monocotyledonous plants and in Java and Japan;
they are known to infest the tubers of some food crops (Grehan & Mielke
2019).
Future assessment of the taxonomic
status of the Pathanamthitta record would ideally
involve collecting specimens and making a detailed morphological comparison
with the Sri Lanka species P. taprobanus
(Moore, 1887) which is currently known from only the type specimen (Image 3)
from Wattegama (Figure 1). Dr. Krushnamegh Kunte at the National
Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, is interested to receive any future
specimens for the purposes of description and naming if the southern Indian Palpifer populations prove to represent a new
species.
For
figure & images – click here
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