Lethe drypetis todara Moore, 1881 (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Satyrinae) from Odisha, India by fruit-baiting

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> Short Communication First record in 129 years of the Tamil Treebrown Lethe drypetis todara Moore, 1881 (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Satyrinae) from Odisha, India by fruit-baiting

The Tamil Treebrown Lethe drypetis todara Moore, 1881, is a butterfly belonging to the subfamily Satyrinae and the family Nymphalidae. The global distribution 15048 From central India, the species was reported from the Kanger Valley National Park and from Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh (Chandra 2006;Chandra et al. 2007) as well as from Pench Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh (Tiwari et al. 2010). The first record of the Tamil Treebrown in Eastern Ghats is from Maredumilli and Jalatarangini waterfalls of Papikonda National Park in northern Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh (Goswami et al. 2018). The species was recorded from wet riparian vegetation near waterfalls.
The Eastern Ghats hill range of southern Odisha is one of the biodiversity rich areas in Odisha (Dash et al. 2015).
Although several studies on butterfly diversity has been carried out in different parts of the Eastern Ghats (Nandi 1987;Nair 2007;Paria et al. 2018), southern Odisha remains poorly explored except for some recent faunal inventories (Mohapatra et al. 2014;Debata et al. 2015;Purohit et al. 2017;De & Palita 2018;Debata & Palita 2018;Mahata et al. 2018). There is, however, no record of this species from Odisha except that of a report on its occurrence from Khurda ( Figure 1) by Taylor & de Nicéville (1888), 129 years ago. In the present study, the first record of Tamil Treebrown from Odisha since its last sighting is described from the Deomali Hill range of southern Odisha, in Eastern Ghats of India, trapped by fruit-baiting.

Materials and Methods
For the past two and half years (September 2015 to March 2018), we have been studying the diversity and distribution of butterflies in different parts of Koraput District. During our surveys, we used the fruit-baiting technique in Deomali Hills (18.644-18.681 0 N and 82.968-83.016 0 E) to capture nymphalid butterflies (Figure 1). Deomali is the highest peak of Odisha (1,672m  Themeda triandra. Wide varieties of bryophytes (around 43 species) and pteridophytes (45 species) have been recorded from this region (Dash et al. 2015). Bamboo brakes are found in riparian regions of Deomali. Rainfall is heavy and well distributed. It covers an altitudinal range of 800-1,672 m and above 1,400m it is devoid of arboreal species.

Butterfly sampling
Butterfly sampling was carried out by both transect counting and fruit-baiting technique once a month from September 2015 to March 2018 at four different sites. For butterfly trapping, we used a homemade butterfly trap (Shuey 1997) and prepared fruit based bait for capturing Nymphalid butterflies. We placed a total of six traps; two traps each in 200m altitude bands, e.g., 800-1,000 m, 1,000-1,200 m, and 1,200-1,400 m. In each altitude band, two traps were placed at the midpoint of the 500m transect on both sides with a distance of 5m from the midpoint (Figure 2). The base of the trap

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was placed one meter above the ground (Image 2). We placed the trap at 16:00h for 24 hours.
Transects and baited traps were placed with the help of GPS (GPSMAP® 64s, Garmin, US). Microclimate parameters, such as temperature, humidity, and wind speed were measured through digital anemometer (AVM-06, HTC. India). Canopy cover was measured through GLAMA application (Lubomír Tichý, Dept. of Botany andZoology, MU Brno, Czech Republic, 2014-2015), installed in Smart phone (Moto G4 plus, 4 th generation, Lenovo, China). The picture of the vegetation was taken by a 16 MP rear inbuilt camera of the smart phone at breast height and analysed by the app (Navarro-Martı´nez et al. 2017;Mahata et al. 2018). Light intensity was measured by Digital Light meter Lutron,India). Morphological features of the captured Tamil Treebrown (Image 3) were studied after Mathew & Soumya (2013).

Bait preparation
We prepared bait for six traps from the following. 1. Four medium-sized (10-14 cm length and 9-12 cm diameter) overripe bananas were sliced into two centimetres thick pieces and kept in a wide mouth 500ml beaker with a lid.
2. Sugar syrup was prepared with 50g of sugar in 200ml of water in another beaker and was boiled. It was stirred until dissolved.
3. The sugar syrup was added to the wide mouth beaker and to this 10ml of beer (United Breweries, Bangalore, India) was added and stirred.
4. It was left for 24 hours for fermentation. The Tamil Treebrown is generally found in forests having bamboo brakes on which their larvae develop (Mathew & Soumya 2013). Its larvae feed mostly on bamboos (Bambusa arundinacea) (Sevastopulo 1973) but they also seem to feed on other grasses. The eggs are laid singly on the underside of leaves (Mathew & Soumya 2013). In the present study at Deomali in Odisha, Tamil Treebrown was captured through fruitbaiting from riparian regions close to bamboo brakes.

Results and Discussion
The present report of Tamil Treebrown Lethe drypetis todara from Deomali Hills of Koraput after 129 years of its report from Khurda, Odisha in the year 1888, is the first record from Odisha and second from the Eastern Ghats of India in recent times. The earlier recorded locations of this species from Kanger Valley National Park of Chhattisgarh (Chandra 2006) and Papikonda National Park of Andhra Pradesh (Goswami et al. 2018) are geographically close to the current site. Of these locations Papikonda and Deomali are in the northern Eastern Ghats (Figure 1). As an endemic, common and widespread species from Sri Lanka and southern India (Gaonkar 1996), its range has extended from southern India towards Central India (Chandra 2006). The findings of the present study, further connect the distribution link of this species to Odisha (Figure 1). The rediscovery of Lethe drypetis todara from Deomali Hills indicates that this species is very habitat specific. We are of the opinion that distribution of this species can be best understood with more sampling studies through fruitbaiting along the Eastern Ghats hill ranges.