In news– Two researchers from Tamil Nadu have spotted a rare moth species for the first time in India in the buffer zone of Kalakkad–Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) after it was last sighted 127 years ago – at Trincomalee in Sri Lanka in 1893.
About the species-
- Mimeusemia ceylonica is a moth species belonging to the subfamily Agaristinae and family Noctuidae.
- It was first illustrated and described by English entomologist George Hampson in 1893.
- The species was rediscovered during a moth survey conducted on October 11, 2020 at the Agasthyamalai Community-based Conservation Centre (ACCC) situated in the buffer zone of KMTR, Tirunelveli district by Mr. Thalavaipandi and Mr. Prashanth.
- The researchers, Thalavaipandi Subbaiah of Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) and Prashanth Prakhalathan of Tamil Nadu Wetland Mission, are the first in the world to photograph the moth species Mimeusemia ceylonica, as only an illustration of the insect existed previously.
Note:
- It is a non-profit organisation founded by Kamaljit S. Bawa based in Bangalore.
- It generates interdisciplinary knowledge to inform policy and practice towards conservation and sustainability.
- For over two decades, ATREE has worked on social-environmental issues at local policy levels.
- ATREE envisions a society committed to environmental conservation and sustainable and socially just development.
- ATREE’s mission is to generate rigorous interdisciplinary knowledge for achieving environmental conservation and sustainable development in a socially just manner, to enable the use of this knowledge by policy makers and society, and to train the next generation of scholars and leaders.
Source: The Hindu
