A preliminary study of pupation behavior of common banded awl, Hasora chromus (Hesperiidae: Lepidoptera) in an urban farm landscape

Common banded awl butterfly, Hasora chromus (Cramer, 1780) (Hesperiidae: Lepidoptera) is a defoliator of Pongamia or Indian beech tree, Millettia pinnata (L). (Fabaceae). The younger instar caterpillar feeds on the newly emerged leaf buds of M. pinnata . The later instar caterpillars move to feed on the older leaves resulting in complete defoliation of the tree. Mass feeding of caterpillars of H. chromus was recorded in the avenue plantation of ICAR-National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources (NBAIR) Yelahanka Campus, Bengaluru from March to April 2022. After the completion of the feeding phase of the caterpillars in M. pinnata , the caterpillars usually pupate in the leaves during a normal situation. An unusually high population of caterpillars during this outbreak, they were not pupating on Pongamia for want of sufficient leaves due to severe defoliation. The caterpillars started coming down from Pongamia trees in large numbers like ‘armyworms’ and moving to other plants in the vicinity for pupation. We documented different plant species in the area for pupation by the later instar caterpillars. The caterpillars were found to pupate on 38 different species of plants from 22 different families. The mean number of rolls made by the late instar caterpillar for pupation in different plants ranged between 0.60 to 4.40 per leaf with a mean number of 1.00 to 5.83 pupae per leaf roll. The caterpillars also preferred tiny leaflets of Caesalpinia pulcherrima for pupation by mere webbing together of the leaflets. The mean number of pupae per stem in C. pulcherrima was 38.40 ± 19.58. On average, the mature caterpillar webbed 5.60 leaflets for enclosing their pupae. Predation of the later instar caterpillars during the movement towards the plants by birds ( Corvus splendens Vieillot, 1817, Acridotheres tristis L.), solitary wasp Polistes sp., black ant Camponotus compressus (Fabricius, 1787), and red ant Oecophylla smaragdina (Fabricius, 1775) was documented. Documentation of plants preferred for pupation and pupation behavior will help in the conservation of the naturally occurring population of H. chromus .