Sarangesa purendra

Spotted small flat
From Madayipara, India
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Hesperiidae
Genus:	Sarangesa
Species:	S. purendra
Binomial name
Sarangesa purendra Moore, 1882 [1]
Synonyms
Pyrgus purendra Sarangesa hopkinsiEvans, 1921

Sarangesa purendra, commonly known as the spotted small flat, is a species of butterfly in the family Hesperiidae. ^{[2] [1] [3] [4] [5] [6]}

Subspecies

• Sarangesa purendra purendraMoore, 1882 - Himachal Pradesh to Uttarakhand ^[3]
• Sarangesa purendra hopkinsiEvans, 1921 - Karnataka and Tamil Nadu ^[3]
• Sarangesa purendra pandraEvans, 1949 - Kerala to Rajasthan ^[3]
• Sarangesa purendra sati de Nicéville, 1891 - Gujarat (Kutch) ^[3]

Description

In 1865, Frederic Moore described this butterfly as:

Upperside greyer than in S. dasahara, with paler mottled markings: fore wing with a semidiaphanous white continuous streak across the cell near its end, a continuous small spot above it, three small conjoined spots before the apex, and three on the disk, the middle discal spot large and quadrate. Cilia alternated with grey. Underside paler; fore wing marked as above, and with an additional small white lower spot on the disk, and a basal streak below the cell: hind wing with a small whitish spot in middle of the cell, and a less distinct discal curved series.

—  Frederic Moore ^[2]

Life history

The larvae of Sarangesa purendra hopkinsi feed on Asystasia and Blepharis asperrima . ^[7] They also feed on Lepidagathis cristata but need confirmation. Whereas the Sarangesa purendra pandra feed on Lepidagathis keralensis .

References

1. Savela, Markku. "Sarangesa purendra Moore, 1882". Lepidoptera and Some Other Life Forms. Retrieved July 3, 2018.
2. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain :Moore, Frederic (1882). A catalogue of the lepidopterous insects in the museum of the Hon. East-India company. London: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.
3. Varshney, R.; Smetacek, P. A Synoptic Catalogue of the Butterflies of India (2015 ed.). New Delhi: Butterfly Research Centre, Bhimtal and Indinov Publishing. p. 38.
4. Watson, E. Y. (1891). Hesperiidae Indicae: being a reprint of descriptions of the Hesperiidae of India, Burma, and Ceylon. Madras: Vest and Company. p. 54.
5. Evans, W. H. (1949). A Catalogue of the Hesperiidae from Europe, Asia, and Australia in the British Museum. London: British Museum (Natural History). Department of Entomology. p. 119.
6. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain : Swinhoe, Charles (1912–1913). Lepidoptera Indica. Vol. X. London: Lovell Reeve and Co. pp. 88–89.
7. Ravikanthachari Nitin; V.C. Balakrishnan; Paresh V. Churi; S. Kalesh; Satya Prakash; Krushnamegh Kunte (2018-04-10). "Larval host plants of the buterfies of the Western Ghats, India". Journal of Threatened Taxa. 10 (4): 11505. doi: 10.11609/jott.3104.10.4.11495-11550 .