Cupitha purreea

Wax dart
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Hesperiidae
Tribe:	Erionotini
Genus:	Cupitha Moore, 1884
Species:	C. purreea
Binomial name
Cupitha purreea (Moore, 1877)
Synonyms
Pamphila purreea Moore, 1877 Cypitha purreea Cupitha tympanifera Moore, 1884 Pamphila verruca Mabille, 1889 Pamphila lycorias Mabille, 1893 Cupitha purreea alara Fruhstorfer, 1911

Cupitha purreea, commonly known as the wax dart, is a butterfly belonging to the family Hesperiidae and only species of the Cupitha genus.

Distribution

From southern India and Sikkim to Burma, southern Yunnan, the Andamans, Thailand, Laos, Langkawi, Malaysia, Tioman, Borneo, Sumatra, Nias, Java, the Philippines and Sulawesi.

Description

Upperside blackish-brown; cilia yellow, slightly alternated with black; forewing with a gamboge-yellow basal streak, and a median oblique irregular band commencing from near apex, extending to hindmargin and terminating at its base; hindwing with a short median yellow band. Underside sulphur-yellow; forewing with a broad darkbrown basal streak, a small spot at end of cell, and a large patch at posterior angle; hindwing with a brown-speckled streak along inner margin, terminating broadly at anal angle. Body above brown, head and thorax interspersed with yellow hairs; abdomen narrowly banded with yellow; palpi black above, yellow below. Legs and body beneath yellow. Female Larger than the male, with the yellow discal basal throughout in the posterior wings, but only in the interno-median area in the anterior ones, and the yellow portions of the cilia, especially towards the inner and anal angles, darker, inclining to orange. Mr. de Niceville notes that the male has a bare patch at the end of the cell on the upperside of the hindwing on which is placed an oval patch of closely packed scales.

— Edward Yerbury Watson^[1]

Biology

Larvae are known to fed on Quisqualis indica,^[2] Terminalia paniculata, Terminalia bellirica and Combretum ovalifolium.

References

1. Watson, E. Y. 1891. Hesperiidae Indicae: descriptions of the Hesperiidae of India, Burmah and Ceylon. Madras.
2. Kalesh, S & S K Prakash (2007). "Additions of the larval host plants of butterflies of the Western Ghats, Kerala, Southern India (Rhopalocera, Lepidoptera): Part 1". J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. 104 (2): 235–238.