Help with ID

[Banded Yeoman]

Sorry for posting yet another tedious butterfly.

If you ask me, this one looks like a pointed line blue. but the nacaduba and the pointed line blues all look the same... ...

Nacaduba ???

_MG_2159 by bluebottlethejon, on Flickr

Thanks in advance.

[Psyche]

Butterflies are not tedious unless you make them so. Anyway on to the business at hand.

The Pointed Line Blue can be IDed by the following points.
The forewing postdiscal band (2nd band from margin) is dislocated at all points so that the 4 spots are irregularly joined.
The hindwing is very angular in shape: the submarginal spot in space 3 (just above the big black spot) is a sharp-pointed V.

So we know this is a 6-line Blue.

The forewing submarginal spots (darker than the rest) forms a vertical band.
Two of the 6-line males have this feature ie N. beroe & N. kurava.
The lower spots are rectangular with flanges or extensions at the corners. This is normally seen in beroe but can be seen with kurava as well.

Note the large submarginal spot in space 6 (upper end) of the hindwing. It is >2x that of the marginal spot.

Look at the dark lines inside the white lines that margined the postdiscal band on the forewing. In the N. beroe male these are mostly missing.
The male of N. beroe also have the wingbase darkened.(Note black speckles seen here are due to scale loss.)

So what we have here is a male N. kurava.

TL Seow

[Banded Yeoman]

Butterflies are not tedious unless you make them so. Anyway on to the business at hand.

The Pointed Line Blue can be IDed by the following points.
The forewing postdiscal band (2nd band from margin) is dislocated at all points so that the 4 spots are irregularly joined.
The hindwing is very angular in shape: the submarginal spot in space 3 (just above the big black spot) is a sharp-pointed V.

So we know this is a 6-line Blue.

The forewing submarginal spots (darker than the rest) forms a vertical band.
Two of the 6-line males have this feature ie N. beroe & N. kurava.
The lower spots are rectangular with flanges or extensions at the corners. This is normally seen in beroe but can be seen with kurava as well.

Note the large submarginal spot in space 6 (upper end) of the hindwing. It is >2x that of the marginal spot.

Look at the dark lines inside the white lines that margined the postdiscal band on the forewing. In the N. beroe male these are mostly missing.
The male of N. beroe also have the wingbase darkened.(Note black speckles seen here are due to scale loss.)

So what we have here is a male N. kurava.

Thanks very much Uncle Seow!
You always make IDing the UFOs seem like a breeze!

And the keys of the ID were all super helpful!


Nacaduba Kurava does not seem to be in Uncle Khew's book. Is it by any chance a new record for Singapore?

[Psyche]

Nacaduba Kurava does not seem to be in Uncle Khew's book. Is it by any chance a new record for Singapore?

It had been shot several times before, but belongs to a difficult & confusing group, and so is kept in 'cold storage' awaiting proper verification.

TL Seow

[horace2264]

Dr Seow, please take a look at the Nacaduba specimens bred by Ben Jin a while back. Could these be N. beroe?