Reptiles of India website launched

http://www.indianreptiles.org/

Following the incredible success of the Facebook group, Reptiles and Amphibians of India, of which all of you are hopefully members, we have taken the next step in not only bringing together the Indian herpetology community, but also providing them a critical resource that has been sorely missing. With the Reptiles of India website, we aim to work towards three main objectives: 

(1) consolidate available information on Indian reptiles and make it freely available on the website, 

(2) actively collect new information on all aspects of Indian reptiles through research, and 

(3) communicate this information with policy-makers and work with various governing bodies so that the information is used to conserve reptiles and their habitats in India. 

Like its sister websites, this website is heavily dependent on citizen scientists. 

This website is built upon the powerful online framework developed by the Butterflies of India website. We hope that we will flourish just as well as that website with the strong herpetologist community that exists in India. We also hope that we can come together as a strongly integrated community of amateur naturalists, professional scientists, educators and conservationists in both building this online platform and using the information generated here for effective conservation of Indian reptiles. Please email us if you have any comments, wish to contribute to this website, or want to join us in various capacities. 

 - Varad Giri, Akshay Khandekar, Nikhil Gaitonde, Purnendu Roy, and Krushnamegh Kunte, editors, Reptiles of India. 23 August 2017.

• Giri, V., A. Khandekar, N. Gaitonde, P. Roy, and K. Kunte. 2017. Latest News And Updates. In Giri, V., A. Khandekar, N. Gaitonde, P. Roy, and K. Kunte (eds.). Reptiles of India, v. 1.00. Indian Foundation for Butterflies.

New butterfly, spotted three decades back

Roopak Goswami

Limenitis rileyi. Picture courtesy: British Natural History Museum, London Guwahati, Jan. 31: A butterfly, spotted in Arunachal Pradesh nearly three decades back, has been finally described as a new species. The Limenitis rileyi Tytler was sighted by London-based naturalist Purnendu Roy in Upper Dibang Valley district in 1987, and has now been reported in the current issue of Journal of Threatened Taxa. "This sighting of L. rileyi represents the first record of this species from India, thus adding to India's butterfly fauna," the article says. The species was previously recorded in southeast Tibet, Myanmar and northern Vietnam. Roy had found a single male specimen on July 19, 1987, at a height of around 1,800 metres near Anini in Upper Dibang Valley in a wet sub-tropical broad-leaf forest. A neighbouring subspecies, L. rileyi xizangana Huang, was recorded in southeast Tibet in 1998. The Dibang Valley record lies between southeast Tibet and northeast Myanmar records and fills a gap in the distribution. No subspecies determination has been made because of the sample size of one. Records of L. rileyi from southeast Tibet and northeast Myanmar indicate a flight period of June to August at altitudes between 1,600m and 2,400m. "When I collected the butterfly back in 1987 in Upper Dibang Valley, there was no freely available literature to identify this species. Even now it is not illustrated on the Internet to my knowledge. H.C. Tytler unfortunately did not illustrate the species when he described it in 1940 from northeast Myanmar. At the time it was bit of a dead end for investigation so I had left it tentatively identified to a related species L. mimica that occurs in Myanmar and China. "In 2012, my partner Jo persuaded me that I should spend more time on butterflies again. After hearing about the work of Sanjay Sondhi of Titli Trust, I contacted him and offered to assist in the surveying of moths and butterflies at Pakke tiger reserve and Eaglenest wildlife sanctuary. It was after that trip that I decided to approach the British Natural History Museum, London, to assist in identifying what I could not identify in 1987. David Lees identified the species as L. rileyi. He also recognised that another specimen I had was not described before, which I named Callerebia dibangensis in 2003," Roy told The Telegraph. He said the butterfly is found in wet sub-tropical Montane forests at around 1,800m. Such areas can be inaccessible in monsoon owing to landslides and with frequent rains it can be a lottery to observe butterflies. Consequently, species that fly in monsoon like this species, maybe overlooked, he added. Roy said habitat loss is the greatest risk to any species. Where the species was collected, the forest is quite fragmented and so locally could be at risk. There are larger forests where it may be less at risk but these are quite inaccessible or in protected areas. "I think it is essential that local biodiversity is conserved and that we are not just left with islands of biodiversity, inaccessible to most people and more vulnerable. For the lower forests, the proposed Dibang Valley dam is a major threat. Despite being initially rejected by the forest advisory committee in 2013, it has been given the go ahead again and some of India's finest forests will be destroyed," he said.

Original News

Paper in Journal of Threatened Taxa

Limenitis rileyi Tytler, 1940 – Tiger-mimic Admiral

New milestones for the Butterflies of India website

By Krushnamegh Kunte

I write with very exciting news. It was exactly five years ago in October-November 2009 that I started discussing the Butterflies of India website with friends and colleagues in India (I was in Boston those days). A couple of months later we had the first draft of the website online and by January 2011 we were running full steam. For me and perhaps for many of you, the past five years have yielded tremendous insights into butterfly distributions, seasonality, wing pattern variation and many other aspects of the natural history and biology of Indian butterflies through the images and observations that were shared on this ButterflyIndia yahoo group and then posted as a long-term record on the Butterflies of India website. We also reported several species of butterflies new to India, and dozens of rediscoveries. Overall, these five years have been very exciting times and remarkably productive in terms of advancing our current understanding of Indian butterflies. With considerable activity on this and various Facebook groups, much of which is increasingly leading to paper and online publications, it appears that things are now shaking after a decades-long stupor among Indian butterfly naturalists. The milestones that we have crossed recently on the Butterflies of India website, as evident from the 'BOI by the numbers', are indicative of this activity:

No. of species pages: 840
No. of lifecycle pages: 273
No. of identification keys: 5
Larval Host Plants: 209
No. of images: 18,114
No. of website visits: 7,00,517
No. of unique visitors Since 2010: 90,487

Recent species pages and images include, among many others, prominent contributions by Ashwini Bhatia, Rohan Lovalekar, Hemant Ogalekar and Milind Bhakare. We are looking forward to more. 

Check out the latest at: http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/history-of-species-pages-on-butterflies-of-india-website.

Kaiser-i-Hind Teinopalpus imperialis imperialis from Arunachal Pradesh

By: Sanjay Sondhi

Here are photographic records of perhaps one of the rarest and most beautiful of Indian butterflies-the Kaiser-i-Hind Teinopalpus imperials imperialis on the IFB website.

http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/sp/2845/Teinopalpus-imperialis

The credit for this goes to Reddy Bei, Range Forest Officer, Pange, Talle Wildlife Sanctuary. For those of who don’t know Reddy Bei-he is a wonderful, committed forest officer and has done terrific things at Talle WLS to support conservation and its protection.

A report in the Arunachal Times on 25 August 2014 which stated that the Kaiser-i-Hind been photographed for the first time in Arunachal Pradesh from Talle WLS prompted Reddy Bei to call me. He said that he had photographed the same butterfly from Talle in 2012. He sent me some wonderful images for confirming the identification and indeed it was the Kasier-i-Hind!

Congratulations to Reddy Bei for this sighting and photographs. And for those of you who have not visited, Talle beckons.

As a side, I spotted the Brown Gorgon Meandrusa lachinus at precisely the same location at Talle in September, a few years ago.

Butterflies of India crosses 800 species pages and 265 lifecycles

On that note, I am happy to announce that we have just crossed the 800 species pages mark on the Butterflies of India website. This has been long overdue but we were busy with other things in the past few months so it took some time. But now it's done. In the slow but steady march of the last 30-40 species pages leading up to the 800th species page (and beyond), we have had many exciting discoveries and records reported on the website and quickly made available to the larger butterfly-watching community soon after the discoveries. Some of the more exciting species pages have been in the following genera:

http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/#!/tx/441-Lethe-dp3

http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/#!/tx/470-Celaenorrhinus-dp3

http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/#!/tx/276-Choaspes-dp3

http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/#!/tx/313-Scobura-dp3

And some specific species:

Creteus cyrina Hewitson, 1876 – Nonsuch Palmer
http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/291-Creteus/Creteus-cyrina

Acupicta delicatum de Nicéville, 1887 – Dark Tinsel
http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/#!/sp/2828/Acupicta-delicatum 

See the full and current listing of species on the website at:

http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/history-of-species-pages-on-butterflies-of-india-website

There are also lots of early stages, especially some new ones by Tarun Karmakar, Saji and Paresh, and by Ashok's friends:

http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/lifecycles-on-butterflies-of-india-website

And of course, many new images of larval host plants:

http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/LHP/

-- Krushnamegh Kunte

Three new species pages, and notes on Erionota torus from Kerala

Krushnamegh Kunte reported on ButterflyIndia yahoo group:

We have three new and exciting species pages on the website:

Erionota torus – Rounded Palm-redeye: http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/293-Erionota/Erionota-torus

Lethe ramadeva – Single Silverstripe: http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/2755-Lethe/Lethe-ramadeva

Allotinus unicolor – Plain Mottle: http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/201-Allotinus/Allotinus-unicolor

Of these, E. torus is of special interest. This species was not known from peninsular India until now. The credit for this discovery goes to David Raju, who in August found its caterpillars devastating banana plantations around Thattekad in Kerala. Since then, several people have found the caterpillars in other parts of Kerala, so this is currently quite widespread in the coastal strip. Vivek is in the field surveying the current range of the species and damage done to the banana plantations, so we will know more about this soon. The case of Erinota torus is taxonomically interesting as well. People on Facebook have been using various names for it: Erionota acroleuca, Erionota acroleuca apex, Erionota hiraca, Erionota hiraca apex, Erionota hiraca apicalis, etc. I knew about the Kerala records from David’s first sightings and many people had asked me about this species in the past 40 days, but I wanted to confirm the species identity before I created the species page. I knew since last year after seeing specimens in the BMNH that Evans’s (1932, 1949) morphological key to Indian Erionota was not useful in separating the species. It is unfortunate that many people still blindly use these morphological keys without double-checking with other resources and without realizing that the only way to distinguish these species is by dissecting the male genitalia. To confirm the species identity, Kalesh and I recently dissected four males that we raised from caterpillars. Their genitalia match those of torus and no other species. Two of the dissections are available on the species page for your reference. From the variation that I have seen in torus in recent weeks and among all the species in the BMNH last year, it is clear that the external differences mentioned by Evans to separate torus, thrax, and hiraca (=acroleuca) are not reliable in distinguishing these species. The characteristics mentioned by Evans included the color of the UPFW apex, convexity of the FW termen and perhaps the color of the antennal club. That is, there is too much variation in these characters within species so that one cannot reliably distinguish between them from external characters alone. We will post images of male genitalia of other Indian Erionota on the website in due course.

Lethe ramadeva is very exciting due to the rarity of this species. I wonder whether this is the first ever photographic record of the species.

Congratulations to David and Anurag for these important and exciting discoveries!

Indian Arhopala + 753 species pages on the Butterflies of India website

India has a staggering 49 species of Arhopala (Oakblues). Many of them have not been seen in recent decades, and many of them have never been photographed. We have been slowly and steadily building a collection of Indian Arhopala on the Butterflies of India website, and now we have 20 species represented:

http://ifoundbutterflies.org/367-arhopala-dp2

These include Animish Mandrekar’s only second record of the species Arhopala curiosa (Curious Oakblue) in the world and the first record of the species from India:

ifoundbutterflies.org/367-arhopala/arhopala-curiosa

And Shantanu Joshi’s only 2nd record of the species Arhopala dispar (Frosted Oakblue) from India:

http://ifoundbutterflies.org/367-arhopala/arhopala-dispar

We have also crossed 750 species pages on the website (currently at 753). They are listed here in a reverse chronological order:

http://ifoundbutterflies.org/species-pages/history-of-species-pages-on-butterflies-of-india-website

For the past few weeks we have been uploading 200 images per week, so we are making progress on that front as well. Do let us know if you have any interesting or good images to upload on the website, especially if they are going to add species to the website. This will make the website more widely useful.