On the identification and misidentification of butterflies of the Garo Hills

Abstract

Monsoon Jyoti Gogoi reviewed our book on the butterflies of the Garo Hills (Sondhi et al. 2013) in the 26 June issue of Journal of Threatened Taxa (Gogoi 2013). We recognize the generally positive tone of the review, and also Gogoi’s appreciation of our use of the current and updated scientific names of Indian butterflies. We also appreciate the fact that Gogoi highlighted the importance of our book in documenting and conserving butterflies of the Garo Hills, and the user-friendly interface that we have used. However, Gogoi suggested that we have misidentified some of the butterfly images in our book, attributing them to wrong species. Since more than 50% of the review was devoted to this with detailed discussion of various species (mis)identifications, it is necessary to set the record straight by demonstrating that our identifications were correct in every case mentioned by Gogoi. We will deal with the identifications and names below as well as in Image 1 in the order in which Gogoi (2013) mentioned the species. For each species pair, our correctly identified species are illustrated on the left and Gogoi’s misidentifications are illustrated on the right in Image 1. Our original field images may be compared either from the book, on the Butterflies of India website (http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/history-of-speciespages-on-butterflies-of-india-website), or in Image 2. Male Tarucus venosus has a characteristic pale violet-blue forewing upperside with black discal spots and a broad black margin that is broadest at the tornus