Melanitis leda

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Common Evening Brown

Common Evening Brown, from southern India

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Nymphalidae
Subfamily:	Satyrinae
Genus:	Melanitis
Species:	M. leda

Binomial name

Melanitis leda
(Fabricius,1775)

Synonyms

Melanitis ismene

The Common Evening Brown (Melanitis leda) is a common species of butterfly found flying at dusk. The flight of this species is erratic. They are found in South Asia and South-east Asia extending to parts of Australia.

[edit] Description

Wet-season form: Fore wing: apex subacute; termen slightly angulated just below apex, or straight. Upperside brown. Fore wing with two large subapical black spots, each with a smaller spot outwardly of pure white inwardly bordered by a ferruginous interrupted lunule; costal margin narrowly pale. Hind wing with a dark, white-centred, fulvous-ringed ocellus subterminally in interspace 2, and the apical ocellus, sometimes also others of the ocelli,on the underside, showing through. Underside paler, densely covered with transverse dark brown striae ; a discal curved dark brown narrow band on fore wing; a post-discal similar oblique band, followed by a series of ocelli: four on the fore wing, that in interspace 8 the largest; six on the hind wing, the apical and subtornal the largest.

Dry-season form. Fore wing : apex obtuse and more or less falcate; termen posterior to falcation straight or sinuous. Upperside: ground-colour similar to that in the wet-season form, the markings, especially the ferruginous lunules inwardly bordering the black sub-apical spots on fore wing, larger, more extended below and above the black costa. Hind wing : the ocellus in interspace 2 absent, posteriorly replaced by three or four minute white subterminal spots. Underside varies in colour greatly. Antennae, head, thorax and abdomen in both seasonal forms brown or greyish brown: the antennas annulated with white, ochraceous at apex.^[1]

[edit] Habits

Colonel C. T. Bingham wrote of the genus in 1878

The Melanitis was there among dead leaves, its wings folded and looking for all the world a dead, dry leaf itself. With regard to Melanitis, I have not seen it recorded anywhere that the species of this genus when disturbed fly a little way, drop suddenly into the undergrowth with closed wings, and invariably lie a little askew and slanting, which still more increases their likeness to a dead leaf casually fallen to the ground.