Paralasa nepalica (Paulus, 1983) (Insecta: Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) in Nepal

For Focus, Scope, Aims, Policies, and Guidelines visit https://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/editorialPolicies#custom-0 For Article Submission Guidelines, visit https://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions For Policies against Scientific Misconduct, visit https://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/editorialPolicies#custom-2 For reprints, contact <ravi@threatenedtaxa.org> Note Additional record of the poorly known Argus Paralasa nepalica (Paulus, 1983) (Insecta: Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) in Nepal

There are 30 species of Paralasa recorded globally (NHM 2018) and Nepal is home to a single species, Paralasa nepalica. In 1973, Paralasa material was collected from northwestern Nepal by Martens. The material was studied by Paulus (1982), who realized that the species was new and described it as P. nepalica, representing the easternmost species of the genus Paralasa (Vis & Coene 1987). The species is considered endemic to Nepal (Smith 1994).
After the first collection by Martens in 1973 (Vis & Coene 1987), there have been only two additional records till date, one from Chya lekh, Mahakali, northwestern Nepal, at an elevation of 3,740m (Morishita & Innomata 1998) and another above Phoksumdo Village, Dolpa, at 3,500m (Sourakov & Emmel 2008). This is the fourth observation record of this species in Nepal, obtained about 166km north-west from Dolpa and 68.7km north-east from Chya lekh, Darchula, Nepal. Also, no photograph of this species is known to have been taken yet in its natural habitat. The photograph presented here is most likely to be the first for this species in its natural habitat.
We observed the butterfly in Talung  Funding: Rufford Foundation, UK.

Competing interests:
The authors declare no competing interests.
The genus Paralasa (Moore, 1891) belongs to the family Nymphalidae which is also linked to the genus Callerebia. The recent molecular phylogeny support Miller (1968) who proposed the placement of Paralasa within the Callerebia series of Ypthimina (Peña et al. 2006), however, the life history and karyotype study by Sauracov & Emmel (2008) showed no new evidence supporting its affinity with Ypthimina. It is usually distributed in the higher mountains of central Asia (NW-Himalaya, Szechwan, East Tibet, Karakorum, Pamir, Tien Shan, Hindukush (Vis & Coene 1987).
This genus is easily identifiable by the presence of a distinct row of 5-7 white points on the underside of the hindwing in the female and reduced white in the male. The underside of females is bicolor since forewing apex and the whole hindwing are covered with a dense layer of to prefer pine forest belt (Vis & Coene 1987), however, the observation presented in this paper is very different as the habitat is characterized by a wide valley interspersed by big boulders and rocky hills with steep trails that are mostly covered with lichens, grasses, forbs, sedges, and shrubs. The anomaly in the observation calls for further research to better understand the habitat and ecology of the species. www.threatenedtaxa.org The Journal of Threatened Taxa (JoTT) is dedicated to building evidence for conservation globally by publishing peer-reviewed articles online every month at a reasonably rapid rate at www.threatenedtaxa.org. All articles published in JoTT are registered under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License unless otherwise mentioned. JoTT allows allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and distribution of articles in any medium by providing adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of publication.