India’s 1328th Species Of Butterfly In Rajasthan

Six years after it was first spotted in Rajasthan, India has confirmed that it has the 1328th species of the butterfly. The Bhimtal-based Butterfly Research Centre declared this and the fact has been validated by Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Hindustan Times (HT) reported.

Till 2006, there were 1,641 species and subspecies of butterfly in India. In 2015, the number came down to 1,318 and with 10 more species added since, the number is now 1,328, senior scientist, WII, Dehradun, VP Uniyal was quoted as saying in HT. The 1328th species is new to India, he added.

Spialia Zebra, is the name of the butterfly species. It is normally found in Pakistan. It was photographed at Sangwara in Rajasthan’s Dungarpur district on November 8, 2014 by Mukesh Panwar, a government schoolteacher. He saw several of these between 1.20 pm and 1.57 pm and sent one specimen to Bhimtal for identification and research.

The institute took six years to declare it the 1,328th species. It has also found place in a paper in BIONOTES, the journal edited by Dr RK Varshney, a former Zoological Survey of India scientist, and published by Entomological Society of India, New Delhi, and Butterfly Research Centre, in its July-September 2020 issue, HT reported.

“The butterfly is difficult to observe because it is quite small and flies rapidly low over the ground,” the paper said. “The species was first seen in [what is now] Pakistan in 1888. It has been seen for the first time in India,” Bhimtal centre’s director, Peter Smetacek was quoted as saying.

Panwar told HT that he has been working on butterflies for over 15 years. “I saw this species at a farmhouse and clicked its pictures, which were sent along with a specimen to Bhimtal for identification.” He has seen and identified 111 species of butterflies so far.

The Rajasthan forest department, Rajputana Society of Natural History and Vagad Nature Club organised the state’s first butterfly festival in Sangwara in February 2018.

The country celebrated the big butterfly month in September for identification of butterflies and raising awareness about conservation of these bio-indicators, HT reported.