Melanitis leda

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Common Evening Brown
Wet-season form
Conservation status
Not evaluated (IUCN 2.3)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Arthropoda Class: Insecta Order: Lepidoptera (unranked) Rhopalocera Superfamily: Papilionoidea Family: Nymphalidae Subfamily: Satyrinae Tribe: Melanitini Genus: Melanitis Species: M. leda
Binomial name
Melanitis leda (Fabricius, 1775)[verification needed]
Synonyms
Melanitis ismene

The Common Evening Brown (Melanitis leda) is a common species of butterfly found flying at dusk. The flight of this species is erratic. They are found in South Asia and South-east Asia extending to parts of Australia.

Contents 1 Description 2 Ecology 3 Gallery 4 Footnotes 5 References

[edit] Description

See glossary for terms used

Wet-season form: Fore wing: apex subacute; termen slightly angulated just below apex, or straight. Upperside brown. Fore wing with two large subapical black spots, each with a smaller spot outwardly of pure white inwardly bordered by a ferruginous interrupted lunule; costal margin narrowly pale. Hind wing with a dark, white-centred, fulvous-ringed ocellus subterminally in interspace 2, and the apical ocellus, sometimes also others of the ocelli,on the underside, showing through.

Underside paler, densely covered with transverse dark brown striae ; a discal curved dark brown narrow band on fore wing; a post-discal similar oblique band, followed by a series of ocelli: four on the fore wing, that in interspace 8 the largest; six on the hind wing, the apical and subtornal the largest.^[1]

Upperside- Dry season form in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Dry-season form: Fore wing : apex obtuse and more or less falcate; termen posterior to falcation straight or sinuous. Upperside: ground-colour similar to that in the wet-season form, the markings, especially the ferruginous lunules inwardly bordering the black sub-apical spots on fore wing, larger, more extended below and above the black costa. Hind wing : the ocellus in interspace 2 absent, posteriorly replaced by three or four minute white subterminal spots.

Underside varies in colour greatly. Antennae, head, thorax and abdomen in both seasonal forms brown or greyish brown: the antennae annulated with white, ochraceous at apex.^[1]

[edit] Ecology

Colonel C. T. Bingham wrote of the genus in 1878^{[citation needed]}:

Dry-season form in Kolkata, West Bengal, India.

The Melanitis was there among dead leaves, its wings folded and looking for all the world a dead, dry leaf itself. With regard to Melanitis, I have not seen it recorded anywhere that the species of this genus when disturbed fly a little way, drop suddenly into the undergrowth with closed wings, and invariably lie a little askew and slanting, which still more increases their likeness to a dead leaf casually fallen to the ground.

Resident butterflies are known to fight off visitors to the area during dusk hours^[2]. This chase behaviour is elicited even by pebbles thrown nearby^[3].

The caterpillars feed on a wide variety of grasses including rice (Oryza sativa), bamboos, Andropogon, Cynodon, Imperata, and millets such as Oplismenus compositus^[4], Panicum and Eleusine indica.^[5]

Adults feed mainly on nectar, they rarely visit onld fruits to drink their juices.^[6]

[edit] Gallery

Dry-season form in Kolkata, West Bengal, India.	Dry-season form in Kolkata, West Bengal, India.	Dry-season form at Narendrapur near Kolkata, West Bengal, India.	Wet-season form in Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
Dry-season form in Kolkata, West Bengal, India.

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] References

• Bingham, C.T. (1905): Fauna of British India, etc. Lepidoptera, Volume 1
• Hamer, K.C.; Hill, J.K.; Benedick, S.; Mustaffa, N.; Chey, V.K. & Maryati, M. (2006): Diversity and ecology of carrion- and fruit-feeding butterflies in Bornean rain forest. Journal of Tropical Ecology 22: 25–33. doi:10.1017/S0266467405002750 (HTML abstract)
• Kemp, D.J. (2002): Visual mate searching behaviour in the evening brown butterfly, Melanitis leda (L.) (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae). Australian Journal of Entomology 41(4): 300–305. doi:10.1046/j.1440-6055.2002.00311.x PDF fulltext
• Kemp, D.J. (2003): Twilight fighting in the evening brown butterfly, Melanitis leda (L.) (Nymphalidae): residency and age effects. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 54(1): 7–13. doi: 10.1007/s00265-003-0602-7 10.1007/s00265-003-0602-7 (HTML abstract)
• Kunte, Krushnamegh (2006): Additions to known larval host plants of Indian butterflies. J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. 103(1): 119-120. PDF fulltext
• Robinson, Gaden, S.; Ackery, Phillip R.; Kitching, Ian J.; Beccaloni, George W. & Hernández, Luis M. (2007): HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants. Accessed July 2007.