Orsotriaena medus

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iNigger

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Nymphalidae
Subfamily:	Satyrinae
Genus:	Orsotriaena
Species:	O. medus

Binomial name

Orsotriaena medus
(Fabricius, 1775)

The Nigger Orsotriaena medus is a species of satyrine butterfly found in Asia.

1 Description
2 Distribution
3 Life history
4 References

[edit] Description

Wet-season form. Males and females upperside uniform vandyke-brown to blackish brown. Fore wing with a terminal, hind wing with sub terminal and terminal slender whitish lines. Underside darker brown ; both wings with distinct subterminal and terminal slender lines as above; a pure white, straight, transverse, narrow, discal band attenuate at both ends, and beyond it a line of white-centred, ochraceous and silvery-ringed black ocelli, two on the fore, three on the hind wing; the apical ocellus on both wings the smallest, the apical two on hind wing most often enclosed in the same inner and outer rings. Antennae, head, thorax and abdomen brown; antennae speckled with white and ochraceous at apex. Dry-season form.—Differs only in the ocelli and the subterminal and terminal lines, sometimes the transverse white band also, on the underside, being obsolescent.^[1]

Race mandata, Moore (South India and Sri Lanka)—Differs from meda in the white discal band on the underside being very much broader and proportionately more attenuate apically. Often the apical ocellus on the underside of both wings is in the wet-season form smaller than in O. meda.

[edit] Distribution

Peninsular India, Ceylon and the Malay region.

[edit] Life history

Larva. " Spindle-shaped, transversely rugose and rough .... two long setose spines on the head pointed forward and two central spines. The colour above is rosy-red with a blue dorsal and a white lateral line, below which the underparts are green."

Pupa. Perpendicularly suspended, slender and regular, except that the head-case is produced into a long beak formed of two thin processes like split straws. Colour whitish brown, with faint striae of a darker shade. It has much the look of a large grain of barley (Davidson & Aitken quoted in Bingham, 1905). Food-plant, Oryza sativa, Linn. (vide Niceville).