Melanitis leda
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| Common Evening Brown | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Wet-season form
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Not evaluated (IUCN 2.3)
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| Melanitis leda (Fabricius, 1775)[verification needed] |
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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.
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[edit] Description
- See glossary for terms used
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.[1]
-_Dry_season_form_at_Kolkata_Iws_IMG_1394_.jpg/180px-Common_Evening_Brown_(Melanitis_leda)-_Dry_season_form_at_Kolkata_Iws_IMG_1394_.jpg)
Upperside- Dry season form in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. 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 antennae annulated with white, ochraceous at apex.[1]
[edit] Ecology
Colonel C. T. Bingham wrote of the genus in 1878[citation needed]:
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.
Resident butterflies are known to fight off visitors to the area during dusk hours[2]. This chase behaviour is elicited even by pebbles thrown nearby[3].
The caterpillars feed on a wide variety of grasses including rice (Oryza sativa), bamboos, Andropogon, Cynodon, Imperata, and millets such as Oplismenus compositus[4], Panicum and Eleusine indica.[5]
Adults feed mainly on nectar, they rarely visit onld fruits to drink their juices.[6]
[edit] Gallery
-_Dry_season_form_at_Kolkata_Iws_IMG_1393_.jpg/110px-Common_Evening_Brown_(Melanitis_leda)-_Dry_season_form_at_Kolkata_Iws_IMG_1393_.jpg) Dry-season form in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. |
_I_IMG_9825.jpg/120px-Common_Evening_Brown_(Melanitis_leda)_I_IMG_9825.jpg) Dry-season form in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. |
-_dry_season_form_at_Narendrapur_W_IMG_4263.jpg/114px-Common_Evening_Brown_(Melanitis_leda)-_dry_season_form_at_Narendrapur_W_IMG_4263.jpg) Dry-season form at Narendrapur near Kolkata, West Bengal, India. |
 Wet-season form in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. |
 Dry-season form in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. |
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] References
- Bingham, C.T. (1905): Fauna of British India, etc. Lepidoptera, Volume 1
- Hamer, K.C.; Hill, J.K.; Benedick, S.; Mustaffa, N.; Chey, V.K. & Maryati, M. (2006): Diversity and ecology of carrion- and fruit-feeding butterflies in Bornean rain forest. Journal of Tropical Ecology 22: 25–33. doi:10.1017/S0266467405002750 (HTML abstract)
- Kemp, D.J. (2002): Visual mate searching behaviour in the evening brown butterfly, Melanitis leda (L.) (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae). Australian Journal of Entomology 41(4): 300–305. doi:10.1046/j.1440-6055.2002.00311.x PDF fulltext
- Kemp, D.J. (2003): Twilight fighting in the evening brown butterfly, Melanitis leda (L.) (Nymphalidae): residency and age effects. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 54(1): 7–13. doi: 10.1007/s00265-003-0602-7 10.1007/s00265-003-0602-7 (HTML abstract)
- Kunte, Krushnamegh (2006): Additions to known larval host plants of Indian butterflies. J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. 103(1): 119-120. PDF fulltext
- Robinson, Gaden, S.; Ackery, Phillip R.; Kitching, Ian J.; Beccaloni, George W. & Hernández, Luis M. (2007): HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants. Accessed July 2007.
