Parantirrhoea marshalli

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Tranvancore Evening Brown

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Nymphalidae
Genus:	Parantirrhoea
Species:	P. marshalli

Binomial name

Parantirrhoea marshalli
Wood-Mason, 1881

The Tranvancore Evening Brown (Parantirrhoea marshalli) is a species of butterfly endemic to the Western Ghats of India. It is the only species in its genus. Little was known about the species in the wild until a population was discovered in the Periyar tiger reserve in 1997.

[edit] Description

For a key to the terms used see Lepidopteran glossary

Males and females: Upperside, both wings dark fuscous suffused with rich deep violet. Fore wing with an outwardly and forwardly arched sub-crescentic pale violet or mauve band, commencing beyond the middle of the wing at the costal vein, terminating at the inner angle, and crossed obliquely by a series of three small white spots disposed in a straight line parallel to the outer margin, and placed upon folds of as many consecutive interspaces, the last being between the second and third median vein. Hindwing relatively longer tailed than in Melanitis ismene Cramer, with the membranous parts of the divergent tail almost wholly formed by the produced wing-membrane of the interspace between the second and third median vein, a very narrow anterior membranous edging being contributed by the interspace next in front; and with rather more than the basal two-thirds of its length in front of the discoidal vein and subcostal vein ochreous.

Underside : both wings ochreous, obscurely striated with a deeper shade of the same colour, and marked with a submarginal series of inconspicuous brown specks, the probable rudiments of ocelli. ^[1]