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The Nilgiri Tiger (''Parantica nilgiriensis'') is a butterfly found in the Western Ghats and Nilgiri Hills of southern India belonging to the Danaid group of the Brush-footed butterflies family. Parantica nilgiriensis (Moore 1877) is a near-threatened (IUCN 2-3), butterfly endemic to the high altitudes of the Western Ghats of southern India, belonging to the family Nymphalidae and sub-family Danainae . It is restricted to the shola forests, south of Nilgiri Hills, in the temperate zones of the mountains, above 1500m, though the species occasionally shows up in home gardens and open country to visit flowering plants. It rarely flies as low as 1000m (Larsen 1987). Though Winter Blyth (1957) mentions it as a common species, it has seen a rapid decline in the density of its population over the last few decades, owing to rapid destruction of its habitats, mostly due to tea-monocultures in the mountain ranges. (U. 2009 ) Species that closely resemble P. nilgiriensis are P. fumata (Butler), a Sri Lankan endemic and P. aglea (Stoll), a common species of low elevations of India, Sri Lanka and other south East Asian countries. ==Behaviour== Egg-laying behaviour: The adult female flies continuously around healthy host plants, occasionally stopping to lay eggs on suitable fresh leaves. It fixes itself on the edge of the leaf using its forelegs, maintaining slow wing beats to keep it alighted, slowly bends its abdomen downwards to lay the egg on the underside of the leaf. It lays several eggs in a session, laid singly, at times with two or more eggs on a single leaf, always maintaining some distance between individual eggs. (U. 2009 ) Adult behaviour: "The flight is rapid, low and erratic for a Danaid, giving the impression that it may not be protected species. It is often seen in numbers on flowering trees or on the occasional Lantana in clearings in Sholas. From time to time it is also met with sipping moisture from water seepages in vertical banks in the forest or along clear brooks, something that may also be observed in other montane butterflies" (1987 ). Host Plants: Tylophora tenuis and T. indica. It does not seem to feed on Calotropis sp. which its close cousin P. aglea feeds on. (U. 2009 ) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Parantica nilgiriensis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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