The Madras Ace

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An Ace amongst aces, The Madras Ace (Thoressa honorei), is a rare species of butterfly endemic to the Southern Western Ghats. Evans (1932) cryptically describes this butterfly as "Uph yellow area narrow and sharply defined. Male and female upf a double spot in 1" (p.255). He described this species as being distributed from South India to North Kanara. True to this observation, a glance at the recorded observations in the available online media indicates such a distribution - the Southern-most record is ascribed to the Idukki district in Kerala and the Northern most record is from Amboli (Maharashtra). All online sources records also indicate a time distribution between September and December, when this species has been spotted from the said habitat range.

Kallar, at the foothills of the Nilgiris in TN, has recorded this species thrice, since 2015. The first sighting happened in Oct'15, followed by Sep'16 and then Nov'16. Appended are images of this rare one from one of its core habitats - Kallar.

The larval host plant of this species is listed as several species of bamboos (Matthews, 2006) and one of them is found prominently in Kallar, the habitat from which these records have been observed. Ochlandra scriptoria, an endemic bamboo shrub of the Western Ghats (Ali et al. 2006) is found in abundance and all these observations stated above happened close to these plants. However, early stages of this butterfly could not be observed from these plants over these years.

In Kallar, usual weeding of the farm and its approach roads are done regularly and these bamboo plants, which are like magnets for several rare species like the Silver-streaked acacia blue, Madras ace and others are also by the road. Though there is the risk of these Ochlandra plants being culled in the process, the WBA has sensitised the management of the farm and the workers to leave these bamboos alone. Future observations of this species from this habitat or the rest of the Nilgiris, by other WBA members will be updated.

 - Vinod Sriramulu

Image 1: Thoressa honrei (Kallar Govt. Horticultural Farm, Nov'17)

Image credit - Vinod Sriramulu

                         Image 2: Thoressa honrei (Kallar Govt. Horticultural Farm, Sep'16)

Image credit - Vinod Sriramulu

References
  • Ali, S., Chandran, M. S., & Ramachandra, T. V. (2006). Faunal assemblages in Myristica swamps of Central Western Ghats, Karnataka, India. In Proceedings of the Symposium on Environment Education & Ecosystem Conservation. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
  • Evans, W.H. (1932). The Identification of Indian Butterflies. The Bombay Natural History Society.
  • IFB, n.d. Species page: Thoressa honorei. Retrieved from http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/#!/sp/654/Thoressa-honorei 
  • Mathew, G. (2006). Development of butterfly farming enterprises vis-i vis conservation and sustainable utilisation of biodiversity(No. 286, p. 50). KFRI research report.

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