New butterfly species found in Arunachal adds to India’s fauna

GUWAHATI: Butterfly researcher Raju Kasambe couldn’t believe that the dead butterfly he found was actually a butterfly new to India.

The new butterfly, identified as Noble’s Helen (Papilio nobleimale), was found in Namdapha National Park in Arunachal Pradesh.
Kasambe was at Namdapha National Park in Changlang district of Arunachal for a butterfly camp organized by the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) from October 9 to 14 this year.
“I found a dead butterfly on the road,” Raju Kasambe, a researcher at the Bombay Natural History Society, who is leading the camp as a butterfly researcher.

Kasambe has photographed and recorded butterflies along the roads and around the forest rest house in Deban in Namdapha National Park.

“I had six participants with me and I was leading the camp. We tried to photograph every butterfly during the camp. We recorded around 180 species, we are still identifying many pictures, He said recalling the momentous journey.

The team stopped and photographed as many butterflies as they could find. And at one such puddle, they found a large dead swallowtail butterfly.
He said that for better identification, photographs of the dead specimen have been taken from above and below.
“We walked along the roads and streams and searched in the roadside bushes. The road towards Vijayanagar was very muddy and almost everyone collapsed on the way,” he recalled.

Kasambe returned and found that the characteristics of the butterfly he found at Namdapha matched the description of Papilio nobleimale given by C T Bingham in 1907. He then verified the specimen with this detail and identified the butterfly with the help of experts Krushnamegh Kunte and Fahim Khan.
Notably, the species’ alternative English name – Tooth Swallowtail – is named after the small tooth-like creamy white mark on its forewing that distinguishes it from its relatives.

The study, published in the Bionotes journal, said, “Taking into account the photographs and previous works and available references, the finding of the butterfly in Namdapha National Park, Arunachal Pradesh, is likely to include species from Arunachal Pradesh as well as India. The first record can be declared.” , its addition will be a boost to India’s butterfly fauna.
Papilio noblei was mentioned by Bingham in 1907 as a rare insect and its distribution is recorded from Taungoo and Karen Hills in Lower Burma (present Myanmar). From Katha and Ruby Mines District in Upper Burma.

In 1932, another scientist WH Evans mentioned Papilio noblei which is very rare and is found only in Burma (now Myanmar).
The ‘Butterflies of Indochina’ website mentions the distribution of the species as ‘Myanmar, Northern Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, China’. It also details the many specimens available in various museums and the many synonyms used to describe the species.

Namdapha National Park is spread over 1,985 square kilometers. And is a biodiversity hotspot. It has extensive dipterocarp forests as well as lowland evergreen rainforests. It falls in the northwestern part of the Mizoram-Manipur-Kachin rain forest environment.

Butterfly enthusiast Atanu Bose photographed the species twice in 2019 and 2020 and again at Namdapha.
Although he identified it as a new record for India, he did not report it but awaited further confirmation, to decide whether the specimens recorded in India were endemic. were of the Wali population or simply stragglers from Myanmar.

Although Raju Kasambe claimed his find as the first record from India, in fact, Atanu Bose had found it but kept the find private. This situation highlights the need for naturalists and scientists to report their findings in scientific journals so that the public is informed about the discovery in a timely manner.