Creating detailed species pages is a critical aspect of the development of the Birds of India website. If you would like to volunteer to create a species page, please email us before you start writing the text to see if anyone else is working on it, and to get specific guidance for that species. For most species pages we expect detailed information, although summaries of natural history information is a good beginning.

If you are contributing a species page for the first time, please check the template given below before you start writing the text. Once you have written all the text, you can submit it by email. After submission, your text will be peer-reviewed and edited before it appears online. You can make changes and additions to your species page after it has been published online.

If you wish to add or edit information on species pages that were created by someone else, please contact us first.

You can submit media files (mainly photographs) to accompany species pages. First read guidelines to submit media files.

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Note that you may not have information for all the fields given below. We can publish species pages in which many fields are empty or have some missing information. Also, other contributors may fill missing information in due course.

Scientific Name: Species scientific name Author, Year (please copy and paste from the systematic catalogue)

English Name: Species English name (please copy and paste from the systematic catalogue)

Subspecies in India: list all described and valid Indian subspecies as follows:
(1) Subspecies scientific name Author, Year (Subspecies English name).
(... n) Subspecies scientific name Author, Year (Subspecies English name).

Identification Character(s): Sizes: in mm. Coloration and additional identification characters, if any.

Intraspecific Variation: Description of breeding plumage, sexual and individual variation.

Similar Species in India: List similar species and their distinguishing characters.

Distribution: Detailed Indian and rough global distribution of the species.
Detailed distribution of subspecies 1.
Detailed distribution of subspecies n.

Status, Habitat and Habits: Status as very common, common, uncommon, rare and very rare. Altitudinal range. Habitat range. Habits.

References: When extracting information from other sources, refer to as many books, research papers and websites as you can, but ensure that your references are reliable and current. Cite all the references from which you have extracted information, in the following style:

Books:

(1) Wynter-Blyth, M. A. 1957. Butterflies of the Indian Region. Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai.
(2) Bascombe, M. J., G. Johnston and F. S. Bascombe. 1999. The Butterflies of Hong Kong. Academic Press, London.

Papers:

(1) de Nicéville, L. 1883. On new and little-known Rhopalocera from the Indian region. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal: Part 2-Natural Science, 52:65–91.
(2) Aduse-Poku, K., E. Vingerhoedt and N. Wahlberg. 2009. Out-of-Africa again: A phylogenetic hypothesis of the genus Charaxes (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on five gene regions. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 53:463–478.

Edited books:

(1) Gunathilagaraj, K., B. A. Daniel, S. Molur and S. Walker (eds.). 2000. Handbook on Protected Invertebrates of India. Part 1- Butterflies Listed in Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, Schedule I Part IV. Zoo Outreach Organisation, Coimbatore.

Book chapters:

(1) Holloway, J. D. 1974. The biogeography of Indian butterflies. Pp. 473-499, in M. S. Mani (ed.) Ecology and Biogeography in India. Junk, The Hague.

Websites:

(1) Inayoshi, Y. 2009. A Check List of Butterflies in Indo-China (chiefly from Thailand, Laos and Vietnam). URL: http://yutaka.it-n.jp/ (accessed 2010).