A decade of a project to document India's butterflies gets more ambitious

Butterflies of India (IFoundButterflies.org), a website launched by Kunte in 2010, crowd-sources images to map and document butterflies in India.

In December 2012, Nitin Ravikanthachari, a college student in Bengaluru, went to Hesaraghatta Lake, a freshwater reservoir popular with birders. A budding interest in nature photography had spurred him to make the trip to the city’s outskirts. He returned with many pictures, one of which was of a butterfly he couldn’t identify.

He sent the picture to Krushnamegh Kunte, an associate professor at Bengaluru’s National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), to be uploaded to a digital database of Indian butterflies. “My jaw dropped when I saw that picture. This species had not been seen in 100 years,” recalls Kunte. Called Lilac Silverline and last seen in 1903, Ravikanthachari had posted the picture on butterfly forums before, but it had been misidentified as a variation of a common species.

This is just one instance of species rediscovery through Butterflies of India (IFoundButterflies.org), a website Kunte launched in 2010 to crowd-source images to map and document butterflies in India. Over a thousand people contributed to the website, which now has over 81,000 reference images depicting nearly 1,040 species — Kunte expects both numbers to go up. In fact, a record 9,000 images came in after India went into lockdown.

Lilac Silverline

Every observation is accompanied by a picture with details of when and where the butterfly was seen, and vetted by an expert before being published. The website also has resources to help those who might want to build a butterfly garden.

One measure of the success of this collaboration between citizens and scientists is NCBS’ launch of similar platforms for other groups. Under an umbrella website called Biodiversity Atlas — India, eight websites focus on different categories of India’s fauna — reptiles, moths, cicadas, amphibians, birds, mammals and odonata (flying insects such as dragonflies and damselflies). New websites on other animal groups will be launched in a year.

Citizen scientists taking picture of butterflies in Kerala's Thattekad sanctuary

“Scientists may not have sufficient resources to carry out the surveys needed for a robust database, which is why it’s a good idea to tap into a larger group of people,” says Mumbai-based Shantanu Joshi. Initially a bird- and butterfly-watcher, Joshi turned his attention to the under-studied odonata and is now one of the editors of the Odonata of India website.

Banded Tit

As the platform turns 10 this year, a quick glance at its history shows how it’s been instrumental in archiving stories of Indian butterflies. Two naturalists, who had spotted a butterfly in Namdapha National Park in Arunachal Pradesh, spent years trying to identify it. But the species was nowhere to be found, not even in enormous butterfly collections, like the one at London’s Natural History Museum. The naturalists finally turned to Kunte. In 2015, Kunte went on to describe the species in a research paper as the Banded Tit, a species distinctive for features such as a shining purple-blue upper side.

Five-bar Swordtail

In Dimapur, Nagaland, Joyce Veino and her family of four have an unusual common hobby: raising caterpillars. “The children are always excited to find different species of caterpillars and learn their habits and food plants. This demonstrated the vast difference between reading about something and actually ‘doing’ science in real life,” says Veino. Her husband Dahru, and children Lightson and Rakoveine, all share her love for both birds and butterflies. The Great Mormon butterflies, which the family lovingly refers to as their “Big Blues” (the males have blue hues), are among the many that flit around their house.

After the website for odonata came up, the Veinos turned their attention to dragonflies and damselflies too. In 2017, the family documented two species of dragonflies (Pseudothemis zonata and Burmagomphus divaricatus) previously not known in India, which Joshi and Kunte then helped them identify.

Red-base Jezebel

It’s not just the chance of discovering or rediscovering a species that keeps enthusiasts going — or the chance to win contributor of the month/year awards on the website. “Butterflies have weird life histories and associations that are fascinating,” says Ravikanthachari, who credits the Lilac Silverline episode with turning him to a life in science (he’s currently a PhD scholar on butterflies in the US). One fun fact about butterflies is that a group called the Rajas and Nawabs often feasts on dung, blood, and carrion. And another: male butterflies, after soaking up minerals and salts from wet mud (puddling), offer these nutrients as “nuptial gifts” to females.

Great Mormon

A budding naturalist might dream of discovering a winged rarity, but there’s a good case for documenting common species too. “Rarer species give us less data. Since you can observe the common species more, you can document them more, and the data generated is going to be that much bigger,” says Kunte. “If we wish to understand impacts of climate change or habitat alterations on butterflies, larger datasets will be more informative to identify trends in butterfly populations.”

Butterfly season in India peaks between mid-March and May, and then again between August and November. Just in time to get that camera out and at the ready.