''Ixias marianne'', the white orange tip, is a small

butterfly Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the Order (biology), order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The ...

of the family

Pieridae The Pieridae are a large family of butterflies with about 76 genera containing about 1,100 species, mostly from tropical Africa and tropical Asia with some varieties in the more northern regions of North America and Eurasia.DeVries P. J. in Levi ...

, (the yellows and whites) found in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

and

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

Description

The characteristics of this species vary according to the season in which the eggs are laid.

Wet-season brood

The male has chalky-white wings with the apical half of the forewing and terminal margin of the hindwing broadly black. There is a broad, rich, orange patch obliquely across the black area extended to the upper apex of the forewing. At the lower apex this orange patch is very broad and leaves only the tip of the wing black along with a comparatively narrow band along the edge. The base of the wing is covered with black scales. The underside of the wing is a rich sulphur-yellow as in other species of the genus, and is covered with reddish brown, short, transverse striations and minute dots. The forewing has an orange patch on the upperside which can be plainly seen because of the transparency on the wing, a broadly triangular area below this cell white, large and prominent discocellular spots with a white centre. Both forewings and hindwings have a discal transverse series of reddish-brown spots, more or less conspicuous, the spots always centred with white. In other species in the genus these is characteristic of the dry-season broods. On the forewing the patch above the tornus is prominent and in some specimens very large. The antennae are reddish brown and the head and thorax anteriorly are covered with reddish-brown hairs. The upperside of the thorax is grey with white hairs and the abdomen is black. The underside of the

head A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals may ...

thorax The thorax or chest is a part of the anatomy of humans, mammals, and other tetrapod animals located between the neck and the abdomen. In insects, crustaceans, and the extinct trilobites, the thorax is one of the three main divisions of the cre ...

and

abdomen The abdomen (colloquially called the belly, tummy, midriff, tucky or stomach) is the part of the body between the thorax (chest) and pelvis, in humans and in other vertebrates. The abdomen is the front part of the abdominal segment of the torso. ...

are white. White Orange Tip (Ixias marianne)- Male at Hodal I IMG 1204

The female is similar with the upper forewing having the orange patch on the black apical area narrower, posteriorly truncate and not extending so far down. There is also an outer transverse series of four black spots on the orange parch in interspaces 2 to 5. The underside is similar to that of the male but the markings are slightly larger. The antennae, head, thorax and abdomen are also similar.

Dry-season brood

In both sexes this differs less from the wet-season form than it does in ''

Ixias pyrene ''Ixias pyrene'', the yellow orange tip, is a small butterfly of the family Pieridae, that is, the yellows and whites, which is found in Sri Lanka, India and southeast Asia. Description The species wingspan is between 50 and 55 mm. Dry-s ...

'' and ''

Ixias verna ''Ixias'' is a genus of pierid butterflies ranging from the Arabian Peninsula to the Philippines, mostly in the Indomalayan realm. Species *''Ixias flavipennis'' Grose-Smith, 1885 *''Ixias kuehni'' Röber, 1891 *''Ixias malumsinicum'' Thieme, ...

''. The characteristic dry-season markings on the underside are more visible, on some occasions very much more pronounced. The wingspan in both sexes is 54–56 mm.

Distribution

The white orange tip is found from the north-west

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 ...

to Kumaon,

Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising ...

Bengal Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...

, central, western and southern

and

Food plants

The food plant for the

larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. The ...

e is ''

Capparis grandis ''Capparis'' is a flowering plant genus, comprising around 250 species in the family Capparaceae which is included in the Brassicaceae in the unrevised APG II system. These plants are shrubs or lianas and are collectively known as caper shrub ...

'', a caper shrub in the family Capparaceae.Kunte, K. 2006. Additions to known larval host plants of Indian butterflies. ''Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society'' 103(1):119-120

References