Sikkim: Photographer discovers new species of butterfly

A new species of butterfly has been discovered in the Himalayan state of Sikkim. Sonam Wangchuk Lepcha of Namprukdang village in North Sikkim has discovered a new species. Wangchuk Bhutia’s

A new species of butterfly has been discovered in the Himalayan state of Sikkim.

Sonam Wangchuk Lepcha of Namprukdang village in North Sikkim has discovered a new species. Wangchuk Bhutia’s newly discovered butterfly has been named ‘Chocolate-bordered Flitter’ and has the scientific name Zographetus Dzonguensis. The name was given after the place in which it was discovered, Dzongu in North Sikkim.

Wangchuk informed that he captured a picture of the said Chocolate-bordered Flitter in 2016 itself and send it to the National Centre for Biological Sciences, and again in 2020, the same species of yellow butterfly with brown borders was captured and sent to NCBS, which was found to be an unknown species by NCBS.

He was instructed to find out more about the species and then he started to search more with the permission of the Forest Department of Sikkim.
Finally, in December 2021, it was declared as a new species of butterfly by the NCBS, and the first article about this new species was published by the New Zealand-based journal ‘Zootaxa’ on 1st December 2021.

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