Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 December 2020 | 12(17): 17380–17382

 

ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) 

doi: https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.6694.12.17.17380-17382

#6694 | Received 10 September 2020 | Final received 10 November 2020 | Finally accepted 12 November 2020

 

 

Blank Swift Caltoris kumara moorei (Evans, 1926) (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae) in Dehradun Valley, Uttarakhand, India: a new record for the western Himalaya

 

Arun Pratap Singh

 

Forest Entomology Division, Forest Research Institute, P.O. New Forest, Dehradun, Uttarakhand 248006, India.

ranoteaps@gmail.com

 

 

 

Editor: B.A. Daniel, Zoo Outreach Organisation, Coimbatore, India.        Date of publication: 26 December 2020 (online & print)

 

Citation: Singh, A.P. (2020). Blank Swift Caltoris kumara moorei (Evans, 1926) (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae) in Dehradun Valley, Uttarakhand, India: a new record for the western Himalaya. Journal of Threatened Taxa 12(17): 17380–17382. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.6694.12.17.17380-17382

 

Copyright: © Singh 2020. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of publication.

 

Funding: None.

 

Competing interests: The author declares no competing interests.

 

Acknowledgements: Help of Tribhuwan Singh (JRF) is acknowledged for dissection of the specimen genitalia.

 

 

 

Caltoris kumara (Moore, 1878) (Hesperiidae: Hesperiinae: Baorini) is known to occur as three races.  The nominate race C. k. kumara (Moore, 1878) occurs from northern Gujarat to southern India (Western Ghats –(Maharashtra southwards to Kerala, Bangalore, Tamil Nadu), Madhya Pradesh, and Chattisgarh).  The second race C. k. moorei (Evans, 1926) is found from western Nepal to Myanmar (Dawnas), through Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, northeastern India besides West Bengal, Bangladesh, and southern Yunnan (China).  While the third race C. k. lanka is restricted to Sri Lanka (Wynter-Blyth 1957; Smith 1989, 2006; Zhang et al. 2010; Kehimkar 2016; Gasse 2017).  The species is known to prefer forested areas up to 1,950m and is in flight from January–December (Kehimkar 2016), however, the species has never been reported from Uttarakhand or even the western Himalaya (Singh & Sondhi 2016).

On 21 September 2018 the author recorded C. k. moorei (Evans, 1926)  in the New Forest Campus of Forest Research Institute, Dehradun (30.3410N & 79.9970E; 670m), India.  The butterfly was trapped in the window of the Forest Research Institute building.  The specimen was collected, pinned, and preserved as an unidentified specimen, however, it was recently identified by the author based on wing morphology and its genitalia.  Distinctive morphological features of this individual (female; forewing length: 21mm; Image 1) being: no spot in upper forewing cell area, prominent large round spots in 1b in the upper forewing inner edge which is visible as a diffuse spot on the underside (Wynter-Blyth 1957).  The female genitalia was dissected (Image 2, Figure 1) and the species was identified and compared with that of three other congeners [C. confusa (Evans, 1932); C. philippina (Herrich-Schäffer, 1869) & C. tulsi (de Nicéville, [1884]] in the Caltoris group (Devyatkin 2010).  In the female genitalia of C. k. moorei the postvaginal plate (PPL) is distally concave, with its outer angles acute and lateral lobes of the antevaginal plate projections are only slightly narrower than PPL which is distinct from others (Devyatkin 2010) .

The larval food plants of this species are known to be Poaceae (Robinson et al. 2010), Bambusa (Swinhoe 1913; Wynter-Blyth 1957), Bambusa vulgaris (Kalesh & Prakash 2015), Bambusa tuldoides (Nitin et al. 2018), Imperata cylindrica (Wynter-Blyth 1957; Robinson et al. 2010), Ochlandra scriptoria (Kalesh & Prakash 2015), Ochlandra travancorica (Kalesh & Prakash 2015), and Oryza sativa (Davidson & Aitken 1890).  Amongst these the genus Bambusa is present at a number of places in the New Forest Campus in plantations, botanical garden, bambusetum and also as clumps in hedge-groves, thus it also likely that the species is breeding here but needs further investigation.

This is the first record of this species from the state of Uttarakhand, India and the western Himalaya.

 

For figure & images. - - click here

 

References

 

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