Vol. 24 (1) (March 2021) Environment

New distributional record of hypothous crameri Eitschberger & Melichar, (: ) from Odisha, Ashirwad Tripathy1 and Kishore Chandra Sahoo2 1Department of Silviculture and Agroforestry, Birsa Agricultural University, Kanke, Ranchi, Jharkhand- 834006 India 2Division of Entomology, ICAR- Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa, New Delhi- 110012 India Corresponding author: [email protected]

The Indian subcontinent is well known for its high biodiversity, varied environment and habitats, and interesting geological history. However, much work remains to document and catalogue the species of India and their geographic distribution, especially for invertebrate groups, in which Odisha still remain unexplored as per insect diversity is concerned.

Moths and butterflies contribute to essential ecosystem processes such as herbivory, pollination and decomposition in many terrestrial biomes. They are strongly associated with vegetation structure and composition, which make them a suitable indicator taxon for various ecological studies (Lomov et al., 2006). As they are highly sensitive to environmental changes and proved to be powerful indicator of forest disturbance communities are receiving increasing conservation interest (Luff and Woiwod, 1995, Summerville et al., 2004, Scalericio et al., 2009). Documenting the faunal diversity of moth can get evolutionary insights and a first step in developing conservation goals for the Lepidoptera (Gadhikar et al., 2015). Species level inventories will provide baseline data on the geographic distribution of species which is a prerequisite for management and preservation of natural habitats whereas local level inventories provide information for economic and educational activities (Arandhara et al., 2017).

There are around 1,42,000 moth species in the world. In India, over 12,000 moth species have been recorded, yet this number is far from being correct as major work is needed to prepare a comprehensive list (https://indianexpress.com, 2018). There are about 2000 species of Sphingidae under 200 genera globally (Kitching, 2021). The last well documented moth fauna of Odisha was studied by Mandal and Maulik, 1991 in which they mentioned about the Sphingidae of Odisha. Later, Jena et al., 2018 studied the diversity of moth in Gupteswar Proposed Reserve Forest of the Eastern Ghat Hill, Koraput, Odisha.

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Moths of genus Daphnis Hubner belong to tribe under family Sphingidae (Lepidoptera) and are known by nine species from different part of the globe (Amritpal et al., 2015). There are only four species of this genus known from India i.e., (Linnaeus, 1758), (Cramer, 1780), Daphnis placida (Walker, 1856) and Daphnis minima (Butler, 1876) (Sondhi et al., 2021; Sankararaman and Manickavasagam, 2018). Daphnis hypothous is distributed in India, Borneo, , , , , , , and (Amritpal et al., 2015, Iyer and Kitching, 2019). Among the Indian states, there are records of this species from Assam, Tamil Nadu, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Karnataka and Meghalaya (Amritpal et al., 2015 and Sondhi et al., 2021). Eitschberger and Melichar (2010) discovered a new subspecies of it by evaluating the genetic differences of the specimens. The specimens found from south east Asia were described as Daphnis hypothous crameri Eitschberger and Melichar, 2010. Here, the photographic evidence of it was gathered from different regions of Bhubaneswar (20.285019, 85.792854 on 29.12.2018; 20.284544, 85.793262 on 15.11.2019), Odisha.

Amritpal et al., (2015) provided a key to distinguish the two closely related species: D. nerii and D. hypothous:

Forewing with ground colour bright green, M1 arising from upper angle of cell, R5 and R4 stalked; hind wing with veins M1 and Rs shortly stalked; male genitalia with aedeagus having a well sclerotized short spur and a sclerotized plate with short bicuspid spur; valva with narrow friction scales; female genitalia with corpus bursae companulate ...... nerii (Linnaeus)

Forewing with ground colour dark brown; M1 (R5, R4) stalked from upper angle of cell; hind wing with veins M1 and Rs from upper angle, but not stalked; male genitalia with aedeagus having two long well sclerotized spurs; valva with foliate friction scales; female genitalia with corpus bursae oblong...... hypothous (Cramer)

This observation marks a new distributional record Daphnis hypothous crameri Eitschberger and Melichar, 2010 from Odisha. As earlier documentations are from North-eastern and Southern parts of India this is a new record from eastern India.

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© ashirwad tripathy © ashirwad tripathy Fig. 1: Daphnis hypothous (Left) and Daphnis nerii (right)

References:

Amritpal, S.K., Singh, D. and Kaur, P. 2015. Genitalic studies of two species of genus Daphnis Hubner (Sphingidae: Lepidoptera) from India. Journal of Chemical, Biological and Physical Sciences. 5. 1531-1537.

Arandhara, S., Barman, S., Tanti, R. and Boruah, A. 2017. Macro moths of Tinsukia district, Assam: A provisional inventory. Journal of Entomology and Zoology Studies, 5(6): 1612- 1621.

Eitschberger, U. and Melichar, T. 2010. The taxa of the genus Daphnis Hubner, 1819, the reorganization of the subspecies of Daphnis hypothous (Cramer, 1780) with a new subspecies description and the neotype designation of Sphinx hypothous Cramer, 1780 (Lepidoptera, Sphingidae). The European Entomologist. 2 (3-4): 49-91.

Gadhikar, Y.A., Sambath, S. and Yattoo, Y.I. 2015. A Preliminary Report on the Moths (Insecta: Lepidoptera: Heterocera) Fauna from Amravati, Maharashtra. International Journal of Science and Research, 4(7): 883-887.

60 Vol. 24 (1) (March 2021) Insect Environment https://indianexpress.com/article/parenting/learning/moths-are-great-mimics-and-can-sniff with- no-nose-says-the-moth-lady-5279554/

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Jena, S., Singh, A. and De, K. 2018. Diversity of Moths (Insecta: Lepidoptera) in the Gupteswar Proposed Reserve Forest of the Eastern Ghat Hill, Koraput, Odisha, India: A preliminary study. Egyptian Academic Journal of Biological Sciences. A, Entomology. 11. 11-17. 10.21608/eajb.2018.11677.

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Sondhi, S., Sondhi, Y., Roy, P. and Kunte, K. (Chief Editors). 2021. Moths of India, v. 2.30. Indian Foundation for Butterflies. http://www.mothsofindia.org/tx/29845- Macroglossinae/2.

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