Parantica nilgiriensis

Parantica nilgiriensis, the Nilgiri tiger,[2][3] is a butterfly found in the Western Ghats and Nilgiri Hills of southern India. It belongs to the danaid group of the brush-footed butterflies family.[2][3]
Parantica nilgiriensis is a near-threatened (IUCN 2-3), butterfly endemic to the high altitudes of the Western Ghats of southern India, belonging to the family Nymphalidae and sub-family Danainae . It is restricted to the shola forests, south of Nilgiri Hills, in the temperate zones of the mountains, above 1500 m, though the species occasionally shows up in home gardens and open country to visit flowering plants. It rarely flies as low as 1000 m (Larsen 1987). Though Mark Alexander Wynter-Blyth (1957) mentions it as a common species, it has seen a rapid decline in the density of its population over the last few decades, owing to rapid destruction of its habitats, mostly due to tea-monocultures in the mountain ranges.[4]
Species that closely resemble P. nilgiriensis are P. fumata (Butler), a Sri Lankan endemic and P. aglea (Stoll), a common species of low elevations of India, Sri Lanka and other south East Asian countries.
Category:Animals
Category:Creatures