South Indian Blue Oakleaf (Kallima horsfieldi)

Kudremukh National Park is treasure trove for animal watchers. Entering into the Malleshwara township inside Kudremukh National Park on that day we spotted a cicada sitting on a moss covered tree branch. As I was photographing the cicada which was sitting higher up in the branch I noticed from the corner of my eye a dry leaf fluttering. It was unusual shaped dry leaf on a moist moss covered tree branch. On close inspection it turned out to be well camouflaged The South Indian Blue Oakleaf (Kallima horsfieldi) butterfly. I used my Canon EOS 5D mark II with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM to capture this using natural light.

South Indian Blue Oakleaf (Kallima horsfieldi)

Because of this highly camouflaged wings both in color and shape like Leaf it is highly difficult to identify in low lit rain forest. They take to wings with the least disturbance, and splashing blue colors of the upper side of wings are really amazing. Once they settle in any other branch even near by to you it is difficult to trace, simply they vanish in the nature. This method of rendering invisible is the adaptation of the insect which resembles some special object to which an enemy is indifferent. These butterflies present various types of color and pattern which closely resembles a dead leaf. When it is chased by a bird, it flies and perch on a branch or a trunk of tree, upside down. Then, it flutters its body, as if it is a dry leaf of the tree is moving due to the wind, completely making the bird perplexed, and the bird, fly’s away unable to locate it. Military has used this oak leaf pattern as a successful camouflage starting from WWII German SS “Oak Leaf” camouflage to the present day camouflage.

South Indian Blue Oakleaf (Kallima horsfieldi)

The South Indian Blue Oakleaf (Kallima horsfieldi) is a nymphalid butterfly found in India. The underside appears like a leaf complete with midrib while the upper side is brilliantly colored with shades of blue.

In the dry season form the upper side is indigo-blue in color. Underside simulating a dry leaf, but the resemblance on the whole is perhaps less perfect. Antennae dark brown; head, thorax and abdomen very dark greenish brown; beneath, the palpi, thorax and abdomen ochraceous earthy brown.

In the wet-season form they have a uniform pale blue of a slightly lighter or darker shade, varying individually, but not turning to white towards the costal margin as in the dry-season specimens. Underside: ground-color on the whole darker than in the dry-season form, but with the same protective coloring.

South Indian Blue Oakleaf (Kallima horsfieldi)

Mr. Balakrishnan Valappil has wonderfully captured the whole life history of this intriguing butterfly in a series of photos on Flickr. Check them out here – Life History of Blue Oakleaf (Kallima horsfieldi).

Phintella versicolor

This jumping spider was photographed on a rainy day on the top of my car. The background what you see is the pearl white finish paint of the Maruti Suzuki Swift car. Rain droplets as well as the spiders eye reflect the light source which was my ExpoImaging Ray Flash Adapter which was mounted on Canon Speedlite 580EX II. I was Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens on Canon EOS 5D mark II. Thanks to Javed Jameer Ahmed of Spider India group, I was able to identify this spider as Jumping Spider belonging to the family Salticidae, genus Phintella species. Possibly Phintella versicolor.So far the species Phintella versicolor has not yet been reported from India. Phintella versicolor (C. L. Koch, 1846) is described from China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Sumatra, Hawai’i.

The jumping spider family (Salticidae) contains more than 500 described genera and about 5,000 described species, making it the largest family of spiders with about 13% of all species. Jumping spiders have good vision and use it for hunting and navigating. They are capable of jumping from place to place, secured by a silk tether. Both their book lungs and the tracheal system are well-developed, as they depend on both systems (bimodal breathing).

Phintella versicolor

Jumping spiders live in a variety of habitats. Tropical forests harbor the most species, but they are also found in temperate forests, scrub lands, deserts, intertidal zones, and even mountains. Euophrys omnisuperstes is a species reported to have been collected at the highest elevation, on the slopes of Mount Everest.

Jumping spiders are generally recognized by their eye pattern. All jumping spiders have four pairs of eyes with very large anterior median eyes. All jumping spiders have their eyes arranged in three rows, except for the Lyssomaninae, which have four rows (one for each pair).

Phintella versicolor

Jumping spiders are generally diurnal, active hunters. Their well-developed internal hydraulic system extends their limbs by altering the pressure of body fluid (hemolymph) within them. This enables the spiders to jump without having large muscular legs like a grasshopper. Most jumping spiders can jump several times the length of their body. When a jumping spider is moving from place to place, and especially just before it jumps, it tethers a filament of silk to whatever it is standing on. Should it fall for one reason or another, it climbs back up the silk tether.

Jumping spiders are scopula-bearing spiders, which means that they have a very interesting tarsal section. At the end of each leg they have hundreds of tiny hairs, which each then split into hundreds more tiny hairs, each tipped with an “end foot”. These thousands of tiny feet allow them to climb up and across virtually any terrain. They can even climb up glass by gripping onto the tiny imperfections, usually an impossible task for any spider.

Phintella versicolor

Jumping spiders are known for their curiosity. If approached by a human hand, instead of scuttling away to safety as most spiders do, the jumping spider will usually leap and turn to face the hand. Further approach may result in the spider jumping backwards while still eyeing the hand.

This behavior can be explained by the jumping spider’s reliance on vision. Unlike many spiders, which use their secondary eyes mainly for navigation, the jumping spider also uses its secondary eyes to detect nearby entities (many other spiders rely instead on hairs for proximity detection). Having ascertained the presence of a nearby entity, jumping spiders will turn to examine it with the more accurate anterior median eyes, with which they identify the interloper as prey, natural phenomenon, possible threat, or potential mate. This leads them to behave in a manner suggestive of curiosity: since they are highly visual creatures that use their anterior median eyes to assess objects of interest, they must, by necessity, bring anything of interest into their visual field.

Jumping spiders have very good vision centered in their anterior median eyes (AME). Their eyes are able to create a focused image on the retina, which has up to four layers of receptor cells in it (Harland & Jackson, 2000). Physiological experiments have shown that they may have up to four different kinds of receptor cells, with different absorption spectra, giving them the possibility of up to tetrachromatic color vision, with sensitivity extending into the ultraviolet range. It seems that all salticids, regardless of whether they have two, three, or four kinds of color receptors, are highly sensitive to UV light (Peaslee & Wilson, 1989). Some species (for example, Cosmophasis umbratica) are highly dimorphic in the UV spectrum, suggesting a role in sexual signaling. Color discrimination has been demonstrated in behavioral experiments.

Phintella versicolor

Jumping spiders are active hunters, which means that they do not rely on a web to catch their prey. Instead, these spiders stalk their prey. They use their superior eyesight to distinguish and track their intended meals, often for several inches. Then, they pounce, giving the insect little to no time to react before succumbing to the spider’s venom.

Although spiders are generally carnivorous, there are some jumping spiders which include nectar and pollen in their diet and one species, Bagheera kiplingi, which feeds primarily on plant matter. None are known to feed on seeds or fruit. Plants such as the partridge pea offer the jumping spiders nectar through extrafloral nectaries, and in return the spiders help to protect the plant by killing and eating pests.

Red Palm Weevil

Actually a very beautiful animal, this red palm weevil (Rhynchophorus ferrugineus), is widely found in southern Asia and Melanesia, where it feeds on a broad range of palms including coconut, sago, date, and oil palms. It is a serious pest of palms, particularly coconut. For example in Tamil Nadu, India, yield losses of 10-25% have been recorded in coconut plantations. It is the most important pest of the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) in the world.

Red Palm Weevil

I found this weevil in my garden below a coconut tree . I picked it up using a stick which was held in my left hand. I photographed with camera stabilized in my right hand. I had to balance a quite heavy setup of Canon EOS 5D mark II with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS. Light was provided by Ray Flash Adapter fitted on Canon Speedlite 580EX II. The grey wall you see at the back is in fact the white wall of my house which was around a feet away. Since the light dropped off rapidly from the flash it gave a nice grey background.

Turn around

On these Photos you might recognize, that mites are transported on the legs of this weevil. This process is called phoresy, which means one animal attaching to another for transportation only. Examples of which are mites on insects (such as beetles, flies, or bees), pseudoscorpions on mammals or beetles, and millipedes on birds. Phoresy can be either obligate or facultative (induced by environmental conditions) commensalism.

Mighty Mites

Since the 1980s the Weevil has rapidly expanded its geographical range westwards from Southern Asia. It reached Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in about 1985, spreading throughout the Middle East and into Egypt. In 1994 it was detected in Spain and in 1999 in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority Territories. It has since spread to the Balearic Islands (2006), Canary Islands (2005), Cyprus (2006), France (2006), Greece (2006), Italy (2004) and Turkey (2007). The two main palm species of concern in the Mediterranean region are date palm and Canary Island date palm (P. canariensis), the main crop and ornamental species, but it also attacks several other ornamental palms that are regularly imported into Britain, such as chusan palm (Trachycarpus fortunei).

Planning For Take off

Rhynchophorus palm weevils are large insects (usually greater than 25 mm long) which belong to the Rhynchophorinae, a subfamily within the Curculionidae. Adults are large, being up to 42 mm and 16 mm wide, with a long rostrum, characteristic for the weevils. They are reddish-brown in colour with variable dark markings on the pronotum. All life stages may be spent inside the host palm. Each adult female deposits between 200 to 300 eggs in separate holes or cavities on the host plant. Eggs are whitish-yellow, smooth, shiny, cylindrical with rounded ends, slightly narrower at the anterior end, and about 3 mm long and 1 mm wide. These hatch in two to five days, and larvae bore into the interior of the palms, feeding on the soft succulent tissues, discarding all fibrous material. Larvae are legless, with a creamy-white body and brown hard head capsule, and grow up to 50 mm in length. The larval period varies from one to three months. Pupation occurs in an elongate oval, cylindrical cocoon made of fibrous strands, about 40 mm in length. Adult weevils emerge 2-3 weeks after pupation. Thus the life cycle is completed in about 4 months.

Wing Open

Natural and uncultivated areas within southern India, R. ferrugineus is normally a rare and local insect. However, the commercialization of coconut and oil palm growing within tropical Asia, particularly the development of plantation monocultures, has facilitated the range expansion of this insect. Equally the commercialization of date palm growing in the Middle East has created ideal conditions for the rapid spread of the red palm weevil between countries in that region.

Early symptoms of attack are distinctive but hard to see: egg laying notches; cocoons inserted into the base of the palms; an eccentric growing crown; holes at the base of cut palms; symptoms resembling those caused by lack of water such as wilting, desiccation and necrosis of the foliage tunnelling within the stems and trunk. Larvae and adults destroy the interior of the palm tree, often without the plant showing signs of deterioration unless damage is severe. Hollowing out of the trunk reduces its mechanical resistance, making the plant susceptible to collapse and a danger to the public. In most cases, attack on Phoenix and other palms leads to the death of trees whatever their size. Visual examination allows detection of symptoms but cannot determine if there are larvae and adults present inside the trunk. Pheromone traps, acoustic detection or infrared systems can be used to detect this pest.

Ready.... Steady....GO

Economic Importance and Damage Rhynchophorus ferrugineus is a major economic pest of coconut palm, date palm, oil palm and sago palm. It also attacks a wide range of ornamental palms. Severely attacked plants exhibit a total loss of foliage and rotting of the trunk, which eventually results in the death of the tree. Control Measures The availability of effective insecticide treatments against R. ferrugineus are limited. There are several insecticidal treatments that are effective when applied to the soil before planting, but these may be of little/no use as the pest is most likely to be introduced on imported (planted) trees.

Destruction is thus likely to be the only successful eradication measure available. Research into acoustic methods of detection of R. ferrugineus is ongoing, as is research into its control using waveguide (microwave) irradiation. Entomopathogenic nematodes (Steinernema carpocapsae and Heterorhabditis spp.) may also be effective in controlling R. ferrugineus. Considerable research has gone into the study of these biocontrol agents, but with mixed results. Substantial research has also been carried out into the effectiveness of food baited pheromone traps for the mass trapping of R. ferrugineus, achieving good results on a large scale both in the field and in laboratory tests. The addition of dates to pheromone traps has also been shown to be very effective compared to pheromone alone, in field trials in India.