After 61 years, four-ringed butterfly resurfaces in India

• A four-ringed butterfly belonging to a family with most members in China has resurfaced in India after 61 years

Highlights:

• The butterfly was recorded in 2018 from the Namdapha National Park
• Namdapha, straddling 1,985 sq. km. of Arunachal Pradesh’s Changlang district, is India’s easternmost tiger reserve bordering Myanmar.
• The park has an elevation ranging from 298.7 metres above the mean sea level to 4,498.8 metres.
• The great four-ring was photographed during a survey to document the butterfly diversity in the Miao range of the Namdapha National Park during 2018-19.
• It was identified based on general morphological patterns and habitat
• Little is known about the current distribution or population of this species, which was last reported in 1957 from (eastern) Assam’s Margherita
• A coal town, Margherita was named after an Italian queen by C.R. Paganini, the chief engineer who supervised the construction of Assam’s first railway line in the 1880s.
• Ypthima is considered a rich genus of the family Nymphalidae which has some 6,000 species of butterflies.
• Of the 35 Ypthima species recorded in India, 23 have been reported from the northeast.
• The highest Ypthima diversity is in China, particularly in the Yunnan and Sichuan provinces.
• The diversity is also vast in Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar apart from the northeastern part of India.
• The great four-ring has dull brown-grey wings with three yellow-ringed single eye spots (ocelli) on its hind wing and a large bi-pupilled apical ocellus obscurely ringed with yellow on the forewing above.
• It is larger compared to other species of the genus Ypthima.
• Arunachal Pradesh has more than 600 of the 1,327 species of butterflies recorded in India so far.

Prelims Takeaway

• Genus Ypthima
• Namdapha National Park