Machibet777 Live Himalayas to Western Ghats, India’s butterfly riches mapped.

The Northeast, primarily Assam, the Western Ghats and the Himalayan landscapes of Uttarakhand are India’s three big butterfly treasure troves, a September 2020 survey has found. The survey counted 38,059 butterflies across the country, which belong to 557 different species.Assam is home to most of these species (315), followed by West Bengal (238), Kerala (208), Uttarakhand (198), Karnataka (176), Maharashtra (162), Arunachal Pradesh (138), Chhattisgarh (137) and Tamil Nadu (125), all states with abundant grassland, sunlight and natural habitats, which butterflies thrive in.The findings, announced last month, were collated from sightings reported by observers during the Big Butterfly Month 2020. A consortium of 50 organisations, among them the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), National Centre for Biological Sciences, India Foundation for Butterflies and Diversity India, joined hands for the survey in which more than 20,000 images were captured by around 1,000 contributors. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(e){if(void 0!==e.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var a in e.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r Sohil Madan, head of Conservation Education Centre at BNHS New Delhi, said butterflies play an intricate role in the ecosystem as components of the food chain as well as pollinators. Butterflies are also among the most sensitive creatures to climate change and are key biodiversity indicators. Understanding their habitats and tracking butterfly populations is, therefore, an important component of environmental conservation and strategies. Researchers said the need for a pan-India survey was felt because butterfly populations have dwindled over the years but there isn’t enough data to corroborate this decline or understand its full impact. Shantanu Dey of The Delight Factory, one of the co-organisers of the survey, said, “There are about 100 species of butterflies which are covered in Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act. They have the same status for protection as the tiger does.” Tigers are a conservation success story in India, under Project Tiger, which was launched in the early 70s.Madan said a purpose of the Big Butterfly Month survey was also to sensitise people and bring communities together to preserve habitats for butterflies as well as build new habitats. “We do not have sufficient data on butterflies to categorise them into endangered or critical status and thus we need more surveys,” said Madan, adding states like Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Delhi, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan had formed district-level teams for monitoring of butterflies, creating a model that could be replicated across India. medium86750707Among the species the contributors to the survey encountered most frequently were the Grey Pansy, Common Grass Yellow, Common Mormon, Mottled Emigrant, Common Emigrant, Psyche, Common Crow and Tailed Jay.Assam, where the Grey Pansy (brush-footed) was the most recorded butterfly species, has the maximum number of larva host plants for exotic butterflies, according to Dey. “Thus, there are more butterfly species in the state compared to other parts of the country,” he said. The other species found commonly in the state is the Common Grass Yellow of the Pieridae family. “One big achievement of Big Butterfly Month 2020 was that all districts of Assam were covered, and citizens from all walks of life were involved,” said Dey.Among the uncommon species spotted in Assam, said Dey, was the Kaiser-i-Hind, a shimmering green and yellow swallowtail that is found in some other northeast states as well, and Bhutan Glory, a black swallowtail with striated wings.In Uttarakhand, the most commonly sighted species were the brush-footed Yellow Coster and Chocolate Pansy and the Common Punch (Judies and Punches). In Kerala, where the most butterfly species were sighted among the Western Ghats states, the butterflies one is most likely to spot are the Common Mormon (swallowtail), the Chocolate Pansy, Psyche (Yellows and Whites) and the Great Eggfly (brush-footed). Madan said it was also important to understand the migration patterns of butterflies. “They migrate, but we have very little data. Butterflies migrate from plains to the Western Ghats and from the Western Ghats back to the plains. Migration is triggered and planned by a butterfly while it is inside the pupa as it can sense the environmental conditions in that stage.”The Big Butterfly Month survey will be carried out every year to gather data, the organisers said.“In our country, very few studies have been done on butterflies,” said Surya Prakash, a zoologist formerly with Jawaharlal Nehru University. He said butterfly species common to a region depended on the host plant. “For example, if there are milkweed plants, there will be plain tiger butterflies in the area as it is the larval host plant. If an area has citrus plants, the Common Mormon and Lime will be found there,” he added. medium86315532 medium86316227 medium86315560 medium86315569 medium86315573 medium86315575 86315581 medium86315586 medium86315674 medium86315677 medium86315688Graphics: Sajeev KumarapuramSource: Bombay Natural History Society