Incidence of banana skipper, Erionota torus Evans,1941 (Lepidoptera: Hesperidae) in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh

Abstract

The banana skipper or banana leaf-roller or red eye skipper, Erionota torus Evans, 1941(Lepidoptera: Hesperidae), is a serious defoliator causing huge damage to banana plants in South-East Asia (Chiang-Huwang, 1991). The caterpillar with shiny black head crawls to the leaf edge and make characteristic rolls in which they feed and take shelter and later to emerge as an adult butterfly. Erionota torus Evans is superficially very similar to Erionota thrax (Linnaeus) with similar geographical distribution in South-East Asia and both are referred as ‘banana skipper’ (CABI, 2018). Of the seven genera grouped in Erionota sub group (Evans, 1949), two species (E. torus and E. thrax) are reported to cause damage to cultivated banana plants in India. The distribution of both species is reported from different parts of India covering Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, (Padmanaban 2014, Jayanthiet al., 2015, Naik et al., 2016), Kerala (Soumya et al., 2013), Tamil Nadu (Ghorpade and Kunte, 2010; Padmanaban, 2014), Irulandi et a/., 2018) Andaman and Nicobar islands (Veenakumari and Mohanraj, 1991), West Bengal (Wynter-Blyth, 1957; Dekaet al.,1996) Madhya Pradesh. In eastern India FE. torus was reported from Sikkim (Raju et al., 2015). while E. thrax was reported from Manipur (Prasad and Singh, 1987; Singh, 1997).