Perhaps one’s first images of India is exotic-tasting food, or those fond childhood memories of parents The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling aloud. By habit, we form associations to the exotic place, and one that most zoologists immediately form to India is the staggering amount of biodiversity.
New butterfly species is found
Recently,news has been circulating about a new butterfly species being found in the forests of Arunachal Pradesh. The find was released in the Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera back in June in the forty-eighth volume.
The new butterfly species has been given the scientific name Hypolycaena. It is otherwise known as the Banded Tit butterfly. The butterfly’s existence on paper was documented and sent in around April to the journal but wasn’t accepted until the first of June then printed on the 23rd.
The official announcement of the new butterfly species was released by Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Dr. Yogesh. Dr. Yogesh has research experience of 28 years in microbial ecology, molecular taxonomy, and biology. He has contributed to science journals with his research numerous times over his career.
What does the finding mean for the region?
Dr. Yogesh commented on the discovery of this new butterfly species by saying that this latest species finding emphasizes just how unique the diversity of animal species, is in this region. At the moment, there is not much known about the species apart from initial impressions and categorizations.
The uniqueness of the new butterfly species
This butterfly is a fascinating find because of its life cycle, in that the mature butterflies only live for two weeks in March every year and are speculated to spend the rest of the year inactive as pupae or larvae. The infancy stages are still unknown and not much study has been done but the food reliance is on bird droppings by streams.
Because of the lack of sufficient in-depth research, much about the butterfly is not known including behavior and environment and other such things. To put things into perspective, it was only a few years ago that another different butterfly species was discovered in the region called the Bright-eyed Argus. So, there is much that still isn’t known about many species, and still others be waiting to be discovered.
