Mycalesis anaxias

White-bar bushbrown
Wet-season form
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Family: Nymphalidae
Genus: Mycalesis
Species:
M. anaxias
Binomial name
Mycalesis anaxias
Hewitson, 1862

Mycalesis anaxias, the white-bar bushbrown,[1][2] is a species of satyrid butterfly found in South and Southeast Asia. In South Asia, it inhabits Sikkim, eastwards through the hill-ranges to Assam, Cachar, Myanmar and Tenasserim. Also in southern India, in the Nilgiris and Travancore.[1][2]

Description

Dry-season form

Wet-season form: male and female: Upperside dull Vandyke brown, paler in the female; subterminal and terminal fine lines on both forewings and hindwings fulvescent (tawny): cilia brown. Forewing with an oblique white preapical short band not quite reaching either the costa or the termen. Underside: forewing: basal area up to the white band, and in a transverse line from lower end of band to dorsum, blackish brown; terminal margin beyond broadly paler brown; a white-centred fulvous-ringed black ocellus in interspace 2, and two preapical, smaller similar ocelli, followed by a very sinuous subterminal and a straighter terminal dark brown line. Hindwing: basal two-thirds blackish brown, terminal border broadly paler, bearing normally seven ocelli similar to those on the forewing, and subterminal and terminal dark brown lines.[3][4]

Dry-season form: Upperside as in the wet-season form. Underside differs in the ocelli being indistinct or absent, and the subterminal and terminal dark lines on both forewing and hindwing absent or very faint; the terminal margins are broadly rufescent (reddish) brown, fading inwardly into lilacine, the oblique white bar on the forewing outwardly diffuse. Antennae, head, thorax and abdomen dark brown; the antennae ochraceous towards apex.[3]

At Coorg

Wingspan: 51–60 mm. Male sex-mark in form 1.[3]

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b Varshney, R.K.; Smetacek, Peter (2015). A Synoptic Catalogue of the Butterflies of India. New Delhi: Butterfly Research Centre, Bhimtal & Indinov Publishing, New Delhi. p. 172. doi:10.13140/RG.2.1.3966.2164. ISBN 978-81-929826-4-9.
  2. ^ a b Savela, Markku. "Mycalesis anaxias Hewitson, 1862". Lepidoptera and Some Other Life Forms. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
  3. ^ a b c Public Domain One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Bingham, Charles Thomas (1905). Fauna of British India. Butterflies Vol. 1. pp. 52–53.
  4. ^ Public Domain One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Moore, Frederic (1893–1896). Lepidoptera Indica. Vol. II. London: Lovell Reeve and Co. pp. 159–160.

References