The Andaman Banded Dandy (Laringa horsfieldii andamanesis) is a butterfly that is rarely encountered in the Andamans. Butterflies of the genus Laringa are found in S. Myanmar, Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, Borneo and Palawan. This andamanensis subspecies occurs only in South Andaman.
I photographed this butterfly at Chidiya Tapu, South Andaman on Dec 01, 2012. The individual in the photograph is a female. The male is overall dark blue with a pale blue band.
This is probably the first photographic record of this species from Andaman & Nicobar in recent times. This is also the first sighting from a different area (Chidiya Tapu) in South Andaman. The butterfly appears to be very range restricted to Mt. Harriet (Lt. Col. M.L. Ferrar, 1948 and Prashanth Mohanraj and K Veenakumari, 2004) and relatively rare (unrecorded in the studies by T.C. Khatri,1996 and M. Soubhadra Devy, et al, 1998).
Find this butterfly on the Butterflies of India website.
This rare sighting joins the list of important ‘rediscoveries’ like the Snowy Angle.
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Chosen as 'Picture of the Week'
This butterfly is patchily distributed and known to be locally common. But though it had been collected frequently in the late 1800s and early 1900s, there are few recent records. This recent sighting and photograph by this contributor are significant.