Ramjee, there are long and short answers to your questions. Since I am short on time, I will give you short answers:
1. Wing color of the Crows (in general, applies to most species) can be almost black to pale brown depending on whether they are freshly eclosed or old, and there is also sexual and individual variation. Older butterflies and females are usually paler. 2. Most species vary in their wing patterns, some vary a lot, some vary relatively little. In most cases, we know whether the variation you see belongs to the same species/subspecies or not based on hundreds of years of collecting and rearing butterflies. Wing color variation is usually parsed into species and subspecies based on the seasonal occurrence of the forms/color patterns, or better, based on how much variation you see in broods of single or a number of females, whether the variation overlaps over wide ranges, etc. There is a long and complicated history of scientific names for many Indian butterflies because they are very variable and their various seasonal/sexual/individual forms were named as different species. Spotless Grass Yellow, Common Mormon, Common Snow Flat, Common Evening Brown are some of the species that come to mind. Look up the variation seen in these species on the Butterflies of India website: http://www.ifoundbutterflies.net/3-lepidoptera-dp6 Krushnamegh. ________________________________ From: Ramjee Nagarajan <[email protected]> Reply-To: butterflyindia <[email protected]> Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 23:23:30 -0500 To: butterflyindia <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [ButterflyIndia] Duars Butterfly Dear KK, Vanakkam! Greetings from Tamil Nadu. Thank you again for guiding us to learn and not just throwing names. I learnt to id yet another new sps of butterfly today and it is thanks to you and Soma Jha. However, a small query, to you and Others: 1. Why and how do butterflies exhibit such variations in colour as in the link page (http://ifoundbutterflies.org/112-euploea/euploea-radamanthus) the UN of the Magpie crow varies from light brown to chocolate brown to black! 2. Also, when only a small spots/ speckle differentiates, some into two sps, how can we be sure that these are only variations and not two different sps? Am sure you would have faced these kind of questions, but would be a Yeomen service if you would help us learn. Thank you again. With kind regards, ramjee Chennai On 10 November 2011 03:47, Kunte, Krushnamegh <[email protected]> wrote: Soma, you had probably realized that your butterfly was a Crow (Euploea sp.). You could have then easily identified it by going to the genus page on the Butterflies of India website: http://ifoundbutterflies.org/112-euploea-dp2 With best regards, 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] <http://[email protected]> Website: http://biodiversitylab.org/ Indian Foundation for Butterflies: http://ifoundbutterflies.org/ IFB email: [email protected] <http://[email protected]> ________________________________ From: Soma Jha <[email protected] <http://[email protected]> > Reply-To: butterflyindia <[email protected] <http://[email protected]> > Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2011 13:30:48 -0500 To: butterflyindia <[email protected] <http://[email protected]> > Subject: [ButterflyIndia] Duars Butterfly This butterfly was seen in the Duars region of north Bengal near Gorumara forest. Please help in its identification. Thank you. Soma Jha -- Enjoy
