A preliminary checklist of butterflies from the northern Eastern Ghats with notes on new and significant species records including three new reports for peninsular India

Abstract

The northern Eastern Ghats is an area with significant biodiversity value but remains poorly explored except for a few charismatic taxa such as birds, mammals and reptiles. Very few studies have looked at the invertebrate diversity of these hill ranges, particularly butterflies. We present the first peer-reviewed checklist of butterflies from the northern Eastern Ghats based on a rapid and intensive survey carried out at five sites over 16 days across the buffer area of Papikonda National Park and Araku Valley in 2015 and 2016. We report a total of 102 species of butterflies from six lepidopteran families. Seventeen significant records include numerous first reports: three new species reports for peninsular India, nine for Eastern Ghats and 14 for the northern Eastern Ghats. This checklist adds 17 species to the known butterfly fauna for the state of Andhra Pradesh. It is hoped that findings from the study will help to mobilise conservation research, action and attention for the northern Eastern Ghats forest habitats, which are currently threatened by large scale development, security threats due to the Naxalite insurgency and mesoscale exploitation of forest resources.