Parantica nilgiriensis

Nilgiri tiger
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Family: Nymphalidae
Genus: Parantica
Species:
P. nilgiriensis
Binomial name
Parantica nilgiriensis
(Moore, 1877)
Synonyms
  • Danais nilgiriensis

Parantica nilgiriensis, the Nilgiri tiger,[2][3] is a butterfly found in the Western Ghats of India south of the Konkan. It belongs to the danaid group of the brush-footed butterflies family.[2][3]

Parantica nilgiriensis is a near-threatened (IUCN 2.3), butterfly endemic to the high altitudes of the Western Ghats of southern India, belonging to the family Nymphalidae and sub-family Danainae. It is restricted to the shola forests, south of Nilgiri Hills, in the temperate zones of the mountains, above 1500 m, though the species occasionally shows up in home gardens and open country to visit flowering plants. It rarely flies as low as 1000 m (Larsen 1987). Though Mark Alexander Wynter-Blyth (1957) mentions it as a common species, it has seen a rapid decline in the density of its population over the last few decades, owing to rapid destruction of its habitats, mostly due to tea-monocultures in the mountain ranges.[4]

Species that closely resemble P. nilgiriensis are P. fumata (Butler), a Sri Lankan endemic and P. aglea (Stoll), a common species of low elevations of India, Sri Lanka and other south East Asian countries.

  1. ^ Lepidoptera Specialist Group (1996). "Parantica nilgiriensis". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 1996: e.T16151A5439571. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.1996.RLTS.T16151A5439571.en. Retrieved 20 November 2021.
  2. ^ 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. 150. doi:10.13140/RG.2.1.3966.2164. ISBN 978-81-929826-4-9.
  3. ^ a b Savela, Markku. "Parantica nilgiriensis (Moore, 1877)". Lepidoptera and Some Other Life Forms. Retrieved 3 July 2018.
  4. ^ Pulikkal, Unni Krishnan (2009). "Biology of Nilgiri Tiger, Parantica nilgiriensis: An endemic butterfly of the Western Ghats of Southern India". Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. 106 (3): 349–351.