Dear Friends, Yes, sudden disappearance of Dr. Harish Gaonkar puzzles me too. He was a regular visitor at the BNHS when he was in India in early 80s. He had shown me some of his excellent line drawings of butterfly life cycles and food plants. That's the time he had drawn the lifecycle of the Malabar Banded Swallowtail (P. liomedon). That time he wanted to collect some of the old issues of BNHS Journal which had colour plates Indian butterflies, he tried hard but could not get. He was to write a detailed account on Indian butterflies in parts. He just spoke on butterflies and butterflies with bubbling enthusiasm, but always referred them in the latin names and that was often difficult for me to understand - as I was a beginner then in butterflies. But after he left India, he was untraceable. As a parting gift he had given me a Slik monopod stand for my Minolta camera. I only hope he is well and would love to meet him again.Cheers!Isaac
See my Butterfly Images:http://www.flickr.com/photos/26689187@N00/ --- On Sat, 22/1/11, Peter Smetacek <[email protected]> wrote: From: Peter Smetacek <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Re: [ButterflyIndia] Regarding Dr. Harish Gaonkar To: [email protected] Date: Saturday, 22 January, 2011, 2:23 PM Hope you do not mean what you say: it sounds too much like Santa Singh and Banta Singh, you know, who were feeling happy----until happy got disgusted and left! On Fri, 21 Jan 2011 06:33:56 +0530 wrote > Ok, if I don't hear about him or his work in next 2-3 years, I will try to trace him and his work, physically. I feel such works are important in understanding our butterflies and their conservation. Kishen On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 5:05 AM, Peter Smetacek wrote: Harish Gaonkar's collection must be at the Zoological Museum, Copenhagen. Some boxes with material he was working on were kept separately at the Natural History Museum, London when I was there, but these were a part of the NHM collections.He naturally did not collect all the butterflies he reported, some were included on the basis of records in the literature and museum collections. However, he was very careful with these and therefore did not report Amathusia phidippus and Miletus biggsi. Subsequewnt work has shown that A phidippus does indeed occur in S. India but the record for M. biggsi is still unique and therefore, not included in his list. No one seems to know when his work on Indian butterflies will be published. On Thu, 20 Jan 2011 03:35:49 +0530 wrote > Dear Krushnameghji, Have you seen Harish Gaonkar's collection ? Is it housed at the natural history museum, London or some place in India ? Do you know whether he actually collected all those specimens during his survey or its more like he collected few, saw few and composed the lists from JBNHS articles ? Last question, any idea when is his book ( Series of 5 books according to Dr. Ghorpade ) is due for release ? Regards, Kishen On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 12:19 AM, Gaurav Agavekar wrote: that's a huge and very informative paper. thanks for letting us know about it. cheers, On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 4:19 AM, Kunte, Krushnamegh wrote: Gaurav and others, just yesterday I came across this paper: Bean, A. E. 1968. Occurrence of Spindasis abnormis (Moore), (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) on the Western Ghats: a revised description, including male genitalia and notes on early development. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 65: 618-632. This has a good bit of information about this species. Harish Gaonkar’ Maharashtra distribution must be from this paper, in which several Maharashtra sightings were reported. With best wishes, Krushnamegh. ------------------------------------------------- Krushnamegh Kunte, PhD Post-doctoral Research Fellow FAS Center for Systems Biology, Harvard University 52 Oxford St., Northwest Lab Room 458.40-3 Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Ph: (617) 496-0078, Cell: (512) 577-1370, Fax: (617) 495-2196 Email: [email protected] Other emails: [email protected], [email protected] Personal website: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~kunte/index.htm Indian Foundation for Butterflies: http://ifoundbutterflies.org/ Google profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/krushnamegh From: Gaurav Agavekar Reply-To: butterflyindia Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 02:21:51 -0500 To: butterflyindia Subject: Re: [ButterflyIndia] a note published on Abnormal Silverline kishen, we always keep visiting that place in the hope that we'll get some caterpillars. cheers, On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 1:50 AM, Kishen Das wrote: Keep visiting that place and I am sure some day you will get the life-cycle. Great job. Kishen On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 4:44 AM, Gaurav Agavekar wrote: hello folks, a note on the sighting of a rare butterfly, Abnormal Silverline Spindasis abnormis, has been published in the January 2011 issue of Parthenos: Lovalekar, R., G. Agavekar and K. Kunte. 2011. Spindasis abnormis, the endemic Abnormal Silverline butterfly of the Western Ghats, southwestern India (Lepidoptera, Lycaenidae). Parthenos, Jan. 2011:13-16. you can download Parthenos here: http://diversityindia.org/Parthenos/ or just the paper here: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~kunte/NaturalHistory.htm cheers, -- Gaurav Agavekar. -- Gaurav Agavekar. -- Gaurav Agavekar. -- Enjoy
