In mid-July last year at around noon, we were taking a break from a long hike near the 3-hour trail at Lawachara National Park, near Chaotoli Beat. Suddenly I saw a large moth land on a small gulli shrub. I have never seen such a big moth in Bangladesh, and the daytime sighting is also unusual. With the help of faculty at Jahangirnagar University (Monwar Hossain Tuhin), I found the genus name is Lyssa, and I later identified the species as Lyssa zampa, commonly called the swallowtail moth (Family: Uraniidae, Subfamily: Uraniinae). Local name unknown. This is a very common species in Indomalaya (Malaysia, Singapore, Laos etc) but has not been recorded before in Bangladesh. Further research will confirm if this is a new addition for the moth species of Bangladesh. Although there is not much old data on butterfly and moth species in our country, research elsewhere suggests that climate change is causing some butterflies to migrate beyond their normal ranges, which might explain how this species reached here.
(Photos and writings had been published in NatureQuest, Issue-2, September-November 2010)
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