KOLKATA: Butterfly enthusiasts from Bengal have spotted and photographed a very rare form of butterfly in north Bengal’s Buxa forest that has a distinct female pattern on one side and male on the other. Sighted and documented on November 21, 2021, the discovery has been validated and published on April 24, 2022, in scientific journal ‘Bionotes’.
Though there are two dead specimens of similar butterflies known as gynandromorph at a butterfly laboratory in Arunachal Pradesh, this is the first known sighting of a live gynandromorph of the Colour Sergeant species in India. “Gynandromorphism is an abnormal architecture resulting in chimeric individuals, which combine patches of both genetically male and female type tissues,” explained butterfly expert Peter Smetacek of Butterfly Research Centre, Bhimtal, who edited the paper.
Five butterfly enthusiasts, Rajib Deb, Atanu Bose, Shantanu Dey, Anitava Roy and Sourabh Biswas, led by butterfly guide Kurban Khan, were on a butterfly watching trip at Buxa forest, a butterfly hotspot, when they made the chance discovery around 12.30pm on November 21.
