Rare spider spotted in a remote hospital in Assam through activities of a School Nature Club

An article was published recently in the Biodiversity Data Journal entitled, “Report of Platythomisus octomaculatus (C. L. Koch, 1845) and Platythomisus sudeepi Biswas, 1977 from India (Araneae, Thomisidae)”. The first species, P. octomaculatus, is being recorded after 120 years of its last report and its distribution has been extended to Assam in India from its previously known distributions in Java and Sumatra. The article was published by Ms. Swara Yadav, a zoologist from Satara, Maharashtra and Dr. Vijay Anand Ismavel, the Medical Superintendent of the Makunda Christian Leprosy & General Hospital (www.makunda.in) in the Karimganj District of Assam. Mr. Vinayak Patil from the College of Forestry in Dapoli, Maharashtra had also found another species in the same genus, P. sudeepi, and this observation is also discussed and reported in the same paper.

The Assam observation was possible through the activities of the “Makunda Nature Club”. Dr. Vijay Anand Ismavel had been working in the Makunda hospital (a mission hospital situated in a remote part of Assam, bordering Mizoram and Tripura) since 1993. He started photographing and documenting biodiversity in and around the campus in 2009 (shortly after suffering a heart attack). Over the next 7 years, he documented over 5300 observations (of nearly 2000 different species) – all of them uploaded to iNaturalist with over 10,000 supporting photographs - http://www.inaturalist.org/people/8853. Most of them are also posted to the different iNaturalist groups of DiversityIndia.

 In 2015, Dr. Vijay Anand founded the “Makunda Nature Club” – this is formed with some staff members (postgraduate teachers in Botany, Zoology and Biotechnology of the Makunda Christian Higher Secondary School -  a school run by the Hospital Society with over 900 children studying upto Class XII in Arts/Science) and about 30 student members. A seminar on Forest Conservation was the first activity – tree-planting and a talk by Padma Shri Jadav Payeng, the “Forest Man of India”. The club then organized a biodiversity documentation workshop conducted by Mr. Rohit George from Indian BiodiversityPortal (IBP) at Makunda and following this a “Makunda Nature Club” group was also formed on IBP to enable members to upload photos from their cellphones directly using the IBP App. Mr. Siddharth Kulkarni, an arachnologist from Pune who is also the Country Coordinator for India on the World Spider Catalog (he is presently pursuing his Ph.D in Arachnology at the George Washington University in the USA) then conducted a workshop on “Basic Arachnology” for the Club members. A few months later, Mr. Siddharth Kulkarni and Ms. Swara Yadav were  invited to Makunda to spend time with the Club members in doing a survey of spider biodiversity in the 350 acre campus of the hospital. Members learnt about spider families, habits and how to identify different species. The hospital purchased a stereo-microscope for the Club so that identification of spiders could be done in the school science laboratory. It was during this survey, that two specimens of Platythomisus octomaculatus were found (one by Antina Pasyad, a student from Class 8 of the school and the other by Rejoice Gassah, who has joined the hospital as a full-time staff of the Club – he was a student of Makunda’s School and is now pursuing his BA – both of them belong to the Jaintia tribe and their families live in jungle villages close to the hospital). One of the spiders had an egg-sac – members observed spider-lings emerge and grow over several days till they dispersed. Further scientific work on confirmation of the identification was done by Ms. Swara Yadav and Mr. Siddharth Kulkarni leading to the publication.

The Makunda Nature Club is probably the only (or one of the few) nature clubs in schools in India that inform and engage student members in actual professional scientific research in surrounding forests.  This creates an awareness of the different life forms that exist, their interdependence with each other and leads children to appreciate their beauty as well as the need to conserve forests and all the species that forests support. It also stimulates the curiosity of children and inculcates an interest to learn more about the species that are observed and adds meaning to the biology subjects that they study in class. A few children, having been exposed to observation and documentation of biodiversity may decide to pursue it as a career.

In 2015, Dr. Vijay Anand and some members of the Club found a male van Hasselt Sunbird (Leptocoma brasiliana) in surrounding forests – this species has now been found in the hospital campus as well. This was the first time this species had been photographed in present-day India and this observation was published in Indian Birds by Dr. Vijay Anand (along with Mr. Praveen Jayadevan, a researcher from Bangalore). We hope that in the years to come, more such discoveries would be made and citizen science initiatives such as the “Makunda Nature Club” would make significant contributions to existing knowledge on biodiversity.

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!

Red Sanders Red Alert

Tricks carrying Red Sanders seized in Nepal: smugglers are getting increasingly sophisticated at smuggling the valuable timber out of India Click photo to enlarge © Samir Sinha / TRAFFIC India New Delhi, India, 23 December 2009—A series of seizures of Red Sanders, a valuable timber species native to southern India have taken place in the past 48 hours, and indications are that smugglers are getting increasingly more sophisticated in transporting the valuable timber out of India.

According to media reports, more than 50 tonnes of Red Sanders logs were seized on 22 December in Leh, in the far northern State of Jammu and Kashmir, where it was en route to China. One person has been arrested with more arrests expected.

Further reports state that in the Punjab, almost 11 tonnes of the valuable timber have been seized, with follow-up action netting a further 26 tonnes of Red Sanders from Delhi in recent days. Almost 5 tonnes of Organ Pipe Corals were recovered during the same operation, which has seen five arrests to date. Meanwhile, in Dimapur, in the far north-eastern State of Nagaland, close to the borders with Myanmar and China, Forest Department staff seized a truckload of the valuable timber on 22 December.

“It is evident from the spate of seizures taking place that smugglers of Red Sanders are operating on a massive scale and are running highly organized international smuggling rackets,” commented Samir Sinha, Head of TRAFFIC India.

Red Sanders Pterocarpus santalinus is endemic to the southern parts of India’s Eastern Ghats, mainly the State of Andhra Pradesh.

Today the wood, also known as Red Sandalwood, is in great demand in China and Japan, where it is used to make furniture and carvings as well as medicines. In India it is used to make a dye.

Preliminary research by TRAFFIC suggests that off-cuts of Red Sanders from the furniture industry are sold on into the traditional medicine trade in China Click photo to enlarge © James Compton / TRAFFIC Preliminary research by TRAFFIC suggests that while the use of the rare timber for furniture may be the most significant driver of recent Red Sanders smuggling, off-cuts from the furniture industry are then sold on into the traditional medicine trade.

However, the tree species has been heavily overexploited and its export, except in special circumstances, is prohibited under India’s Foreign Trade Policy. It is also protected under the Red Sanders and Sandalwood Transit Rules of Andhra Pradesh Forest Act, 1967 and international trade is controlled through the listing of Pterocarpus santalinus in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

According to their latest annual report, India’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) made 15 Red Sanders seizures in 2008–2009. This was slightly down from just over 20 in each of the years since 2005 when the largest total seized was 466 cubic metres of logs in 2005–2006.

Smuggling attempts uncovered often involve the concealment or misdeclaration of the timber in shipments as everything from jute bags to zinc oxide to mustard oil cake and even salt.

Logs have often been intercepted being transported by road from India to China via Nepal.

Since 2006, almost 1000 tonnes of Red Sanders has been recovered from near various Customs and border posts across India, including the Indo-Nepal border. On the Nepal side, over 400 tonnes of the wood has been seized during the same period, almost all of it destined for China.

However, other overland smuggling routes are becoming apparent. In October 2009, a consignment of around 2000 logs was intercepted by DRI officers near Aizawl, in north-eastern India, believed to be en route to China direct from India. Six Chinese nationals were arrested at the scene.

Elsewhere in north-eastern India, according to media reports, at least 100 tonnes of Red Sanders have been seized in Manipur and Mizoram since August 2009, and 600 tonnes seized by the forest department in transit in Dhubri and Burdawan.

According to the DRI report, in 2008–2009, on five occasions the DRI seized shipping containers with Red Sanders en route to Dubai, and in two cases each it was to UAE and Malaysia. However, a recent seizure finds criminals getting more sophisticated in getting the wood aboard ships to be smuggled out of India.

In November 2009, two clearing agents at Chennai port were arrested in a case involving 32 tonnes of Red Sanders logs. The men were said to have used the name of their regular export clients—who were unaware of the scam—and made duplicate shipping bills, complete with the signatures of all Customs officials concerned. They forged rubber stamps and even duplicated the time locks used by Customs to seal export containers meant to ensure their authenticity. The cargo was then cleared by the agents and loaded onto ships and cleared for export without any Customs check. In December 2009, part of the same consignment was uncovered after DRI officials recalled a container destined for Dubai and discovered 339 Red Sanders logs weighing 9 tonnes aboard.

“We are seeing several changes to the nature and scale of the illicit trade in Red Sanders,” said Sinha.

“For example, logs are being transported via different routes overland and are being shipped to the Middle East, although whether this is to markets in that region or it is just being used as a transit point, remains to be seen.

“The DRI are to be congratulated for their diligence in uncovering these smuggling routes and techniques, but as well as stopping the smuggling in India, we urgently need to find out more about what can be done to control the drivers of the Red Sanders demand in China, Japan and elsewhere.”

The Government of India's Ministry of Environment & Forests Wildlife Crime Control Bureau in New Delhi has published an Enforcer's manual on Red Sanders.

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