Fw: Butterfly new to Sri Lanka

[krushnamegh at mail.utexas.edu]

this is an exciting find, indeed! although it is very much possible 
that the butterflies were carried from SE Asia to sri lanka by ships 
or as eggs/larvae/pupae on ornamental plants, island-hopping is a 
real possibility. there are some species with very interesting 
distributional ranges; these occur in SE asia and australia and then 
in the andaman-nicobar islands and in sri lanka but not in the 
western ghats of SW india. others occur in SE asia and then in the 
andaman-nicobar islands and in sri lanka-western ghats. these do not 
occur in N. indo-china or NE india and the himalayas, indicating that 
they might have arrived in the western ghats and sri lanka over the 
bay of bengal. another possibility is that they have gone extinct 
from indo-china, NE india and the himalayas, although the 
biogeographic patterns are more supportive of island-hopping. more on 
this in a couple of papers on the biogeography of SW indian 
butterflies, one of which is in press and i am finishing the other.

At 1:37 PM -0500 2/26/08, Carolyn King wrote:
>I am posting this for Nancy and Michael van der Poorten, who are 
>currently living and doing research in Sri Lanka.
>Exciting news!
>
>Carolyn King
>Toronto Entomologists' Association
>
>----- Forwarded by Carolyn King/fs/YorkU on 02/26/08 01:19 PM -----
>Michael & Nancy van der Poorten <info at srilankaninsects.net>
>
>02/25/08 03:45 AM
>To
>Carolyn King <cking at yorku.ca>, Chris Darling <chrisd at rom.on.ca>, 
>"Colin Jones (home)" <cdjones at csolve.net>
>cc
>Subject
>Butterfly new to Sri Lanka
>
>
>
>Hi all,
>Just wanted to let you know that we've 'discovered' a butterfly new to
>SL! Not new to science. It's Catopsilia scylla, the Orange Migrant,
>which is common in Northern Australia, Singapore, Malaysia etc. It has
>never been reported in Sri Lanka before. We first saw adults, then when
>we checked the plants they were hanging around, we found pupal cases,
>pupae, eggs, larvae of all stages! So they seem to be breeding here. How
>they got here still needs to be worked out, possibly on some imported
>plant material. There's more information at our website:
>www.srilankaninsects.net
>
>and in this newspaper article (which has some incorrect information):
>www.sundaytimes.lk/080224/Plus/plus00002.html
>
>Nancy & Michael


-- 

Krushnamegh.
--------------------------------
Krushnamegh Kunte
Doctoral Student (Gilbert and Juenger Labs).

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