The Forget-me-not (Catochrysops strabo) is a small butterfly found in Asia that belongs to the Lycaenids or Blues

Lycaenidae

The Lycaenidae are the second-largest family of butterflies, with about 6000 species worldwide, whose members are also called gossamer-winged butterflies...

 family. It is found in Ceylon, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, from Sikkim

Sikkim

Sikkim is a landlocked Indian state nestled in the Himalayan mountains...

 to Indochina

Indochina

The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...

 and in Sundaland

Sundaland

Sundaland is a biogeographical region of Southeastern Asia which encompasses the areas of the Asian continental shelf that was exposed during the last ice age. It included the Malay Peninsula on the Asian mainland, as well as the large islands of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra and their surrounding...

, Sulawesi

Sulawesi

Sulawesi is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands. In Indonesia, only Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua are larger in territory, and only Java and Sumatra have larger Indonesian populations.- Etymology :The Portuguese were the first to...

 and the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

.

The wingspan

Wingspan

The wingspan of an airplane or a bird, is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777 has a wingspan of about ; and a Wandering Albatross caught in 1965 had a wingspan of , the official record for a living bird.The term wingspan, more technically extent, is...

 is 25–30 mm.

The larvae feed on Ougeinia dalbergioides, Schleichera trijuga and Desmodium

Desmodium

Desmodium is a genus in the flowering plant family Fabaceae, sometimes called tick-trefoil, tick clover or beggar lice. There are dozens of species and the delimitation of the genus has shifted much over time....

species.

Subspecies

• Catochrysops strabo strabo
• Catochrysops strabo celebensis (Halmahera, Obi)
• Catochrysops strabo luzonensis (Philippines)

Description

Male

Upperside: Pale violet with in certain lights a blue, slightly-silvery sheen. Fore wing: a slender anticiliary dark line. Hind wing: interspace 1 with a short transverse subterminal brown bar edged inwardly with white; interspace 2 with a prominent round black spot edged very faintly on the inner side by a diffuse bluish lunule; the dark subterminal spots of the underside apparent through transparency; an anticiliary slender jet-black line more conspicuous than in the fore wing, in some specimens edged inwardly in the posterior interspaces with white; this line is present in interspaces 1 and 2 in all specimens. Cilia of both fore and hind wings white transversely traversed medially by a brown line; tail black tipped with white.

Underside; pale dull grey. Fore wing: a short transverse band on the discocellulars, a small round subcostal spot in interspace 10, a transverse discal band that extends from veins 1 to 7, the portion below vein 3 dislocated and shifted inwards, a transverse subterminal ill-defined band and a terminal series of inwardly rounded spots, each of which subapically fills an interspace, dark greyish-brown; the discocellular and discal bands edged inwardly and outwardly by white lines, the subcostal spot encircled with white and the subterminal band and terminal spots edged on their inner sides with the same colour; lastly, a dark greyish-brown anticiliary line. Hind wing: a subbasal spot and a spot beyond it in interspace 7, a large round subterminal spot crowned with ochraceous in interspace 2, two geminate specks subterminally in interspace 1 and a terminal similar speck in interspace 1a, black, the spots in interspace 7 encircled with white ; a lunular spot in middle of cell, two elongate spots in transverse order below it, a short transverse band on the discocellulars and a very irregular, transverse, sinuous discal band dark greyish-brown, edged inwardly and outwardly with white; beyond these is an inner subtermiual series of greyish-brown lunules followed by an outer subterminal series of similarly coloured spots, the latter encircled with white, and a black anticiliary slender line. Antennae, head, thorax and abdomen dark brown, a little purplish on the thorax, the shafts of the antennas speckled with white; beneath : the palpi, thorax and abdomen white.

Female

Upperside, fore wing: costa, apex and termen broadly brownish-black, rest of the wing whitish, flushed and overlaid especially at base with metallic blue. Hind wing: costa and termen broadly fuscous or brownish black, the rest of the wing whitish flushed with metallic blue as on the fore wing which, however, does not spread to the dorsal margin ; a discal curved medial series of fuscous spots; a transverse, incomplete, postdiscal series of white sagittate lunules followed by a subterminal series of spots as follows, superposed on the brownish-black terminal border:—two black geminate dots margined inwardly and outwardly with white, a large black spot crowned broadly with ochraceous inwardly and edged slenderly with white on the outer side in interspace 2, and anterior to that a transversely linear black spot encircled with white in each interspace. Cilia of fore wing brown, of hind wing white traversed by a transverse medial brown line.
Underside : ground-colour and markings as in the male. Antennas, head, thorax and abdomen similar to those of the male. Eyes in both sexes hairy.

Distribution

Peninsular India south of the outer ranges of the Himalayas; Ceylon; Assam ; Burma; Tenasserim; the Andamans; Nicobars; extending through the Malayan Subregion down to Australia.

Larva

"Of the usual shape (i. e. onisciform); head light yellow margined with brown; body light rose, covered with tiny star-topped stems so arranged as to make diagonal whitish lines to each segment; a subdorsal line on the back; anal segment nearly square, the margins of the body clothed with light coloured and longish hair" (Davidson, Bell & Aitken.)

Pupa

"Of the usual form, covered with stiff erect hair; colour light rose with a black patch on the second segment and centre of thorax; it has also a dark dorsal line and the lower segments are smudged with black" (Davidson, Bell & Aitken.)

External links

• http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~EY4Y-TKNM/philframe.htmlPhotos of C. strabo from the Philippines
  Philippines
  The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
  
  ]
• Species info