Occasional photographic records of butterflies (Lepidoptera, Hesperioidea and Papilionoidea) in Cambodia. 2. Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri Provinces of Eastern Cambodia, 2013-2018

In this article I present the casual photographic records of butterflies (Lepidoptera, Papilionoidea) made along with the studies on the Odonata fauna in 33 localities of two eastern provinces of Cambodia, Ratanakiri and Mondilkiri in 2013-2018. The butterflies were photographed in purely natural conditions without any restriction of their freedom and mobility, using two cameras, Olympus Camedia C8080 and Canon EOS 350D, the latter with the lens Sigma AF 24-70 mm F2.8 EX DG MACRO. Coordinates were obtained with Garmine eTrex H personal GPS navigator and revised with Google Earth; elevations were retrieved from Google Earth. In total, I identified 118 and provisionally identified five species; 19 species (Abisara cf. bifasciata, Poritia cf. hewitsoni, Ahmetia achaja, Arhopala nicevillei, Sinthusa chandrana, Virachola sp. cf. kessuma, Zizeera maha, Tirumala limniace, Junonia hierta, Yoma sabina, Terinos clarissa, Euripus nyctelius, Lethe rohria, Bibasis sena, Caprona agama, C. alida, Aeromachus cf. pygmaeus, Gangara thyrsis, and Udaspes folus) and one subspecies (Kallima inachus alboinachus) are reported for Cambodia for the first time. I also illustrated these species as well as some more provisionally identified and unidentified for this region.


Introduction
Butterflies are among few insects beloved by public and at the same time used as explicit indicators of habitat quality. Some half a century ago, Cambodia was a bewildered kingdom of vast areas of pristine tropical forests, but now it is among the most rapidly deforested countries. Notably these are mostly lowland tropical forests, persisting in the country until present, which are being especially furiously logged (Kosterin 2019a;. In view of this rampant loss of biodiversity, it is especially dramatic that Cambodia has yet been so scarcely studied with respect to biodiversity. Even the butterfly fauna, which is usually among the best known, is still poorly revealed so that it is easy to meet a species not yet reported for the country. In recent decades just five papers devoted to them were published: two with results of the butterfly-focused trips by Hiraoki Onodera (2007;2008;2009a), one with results of a thorough stationary study of the Phom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary in the inland Cardamoms by Monastyrskii et al. (2011), a popular atlas of the butterflies of SW Cambodia by Woodfield and Murton (2006). Among them also was the initial communication by Kosterin (2019a) based on photographic records only; and the current paper is the second from this series. The checklist of Cambodian butterflies has not been published yet. Yutaka Inayoshi (2019) summarised the faunistic information on butterflies of Thailand and Indochina at his most popular and quite comprehensive internet site 'A Check List of Butterflies in Indo-China'. However, the data on Cambodia are only partially presented there since many species reported by Monastyrskii et al. (2011) are still missing. In view of this paucity of data on the background of habitat loss, even preliminary knowledge of butterfly fauna and distribution in Cambodia becomes useful. Because of their wing pattern, many butterflies can be reliably identified by photographs. Nevertheless, identification of quite a number of butterflies require examination of the male genitalia or demand the pattern of both wing sides, that is rarely available in photos. Most Nacaduba Moore, [1881], Prosotas Druce, 1891 and of many genera in the family Hesperiidae is problematic. Nevertheless, publication of even preliminary faunal data, with explicit awareness of the limitations of the photographic method, is useful as a step of revealing the butterfly fauna of certain territory.
My 12 trips to Cambodia since 2006 (counting 178 days in total) were aimed at faunistic and taxonomic studies of dragonflies and damselflies (Odonata). Since I occasionally and rather non-selectively take pictures of butterflies while searching for odonates, a considerable by-side product of butterfly photographs is being accumulated and presented in my website (Kosterin 2019c). Earlier I summarised these data obtained from 2010 to 2018 in four south-western provinces of Cambodia occupying the coastal foothills of the Cardamom Mts. (Kosterin 2019a).
In this second communication, I present the photographic faunal data on butterflies obtained in the two eastern provinces residing in the western outskirts and Central Plateau of the Annamense Mountains: Ratanakiri, visited in 2013, and Mondulkiri, visited in 2014. It is noteworthy that both provinces were earlier visited by H. Onodera, who collected butterflies in 2006 at Veun Sai, Poy, Kalay, Ban Lung, O'Chum, andTa Veang in Ratanakiri Province (Onodera 2007) (the three latter sites also examined by me in 2013), and at Leu, Ou Play, Romonea, O'Rang, Sen Monorom, and Buu Sraa (Onodera 2009a) (again, the three latter sites examined by me in 2014-2018).
I also have some data from the western, north-western, and northern provinces of Cambodia, namely Pursat, Siem Reap, Preah Vihear, and Stung Treng, which will be published when I finish my preliminary odonatological investigations of these regions.

Methods
The butterflies were photographed in purely natural conditions without any restriction of their freedom and mobility, using two cameras, Olympus Camedia C8080 and Canon EOS 350D, the latter with the lens Sigma AF 24-70 mm F2.8 EX DG MACRO. Coordinates were obtained with Garmine eTrex H personal GPS navigator and revised with Google Earth; elevations were retrieved from Google Earth.
Identification and taxonomy The taxonomic system used in the site 'A Check List of Butterflies in Indo-China' (Inayoshi 2019) is adopted, but more subfamilies are recognised.
The butterflies were identified using the internet site 'Butterflies in Indochina' by Y. Inayoshi (2019) and some more taxonomically (Corbet 1941;Evans 1957;Nakamura 2014) or geographically restricted sources devoted to the butterflies of Thailand (Ek-Amnuay 2006, with corrigenda by Ek-Amnuay et al. 2007), Cambodia (Onodera 2009;2008;2009a), Laos (Onodera, 2009b(Onodera, , 2015 and his unpublished reports kindly provided by the author), Vietnam (Callaghan 2009) and Borneo (Seki et al. 2991). Useful hints came from the internet resources 'The Thailand Butterflies Species Gallery' by Antonio Giudici (2019) and illustrated checklists for Papilionoidea (Chartier, 2019a) and Hesperioideae (Chartier 2019b) of the Tatai Commune of Koh Kong Province of Cambodia at the internet site 'Gee's Nature Tours' by Gerard Chartier, who also greatly helped with identification of some difficult cases.
Most of the photos were identified to species. Provisional identifications are marked with 'cf'. With only two exceptions indicated below, no subspecies identification was attempted. However, most of the Oriental butterflies have geographically distinct subspecies so the species were formally attributed to their biogeographically relevant subspecies according to Inayoshi (2019).
All the photos are available at my internet site (Kosterin 2019c) and are open to be critically reconsidered.

Abbreviations and designations
The following widespread moprhological abbreviations were used: FW and HW -fore and hind wing, respectively, UPS and UNS -upperside and underside of both wings, respectively, UPF, UPH, UNF and UNH -upperside of fore and hind wing and underside of fore and hind wing, respectively; the numeration of spaces follows the standard British system in which they are numberred according to the dorsal (lower in the common illustration position) bordering vein (see Ek-Amnuay 2006). The Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri Provinces are abbreviated with two boldface letters Ra and Mo, respectively. The dates are given in the dd.mm.year system. The area Ratanakiri Province Ratanakiri (Khmer 'Gem Mountains') Province, occupying the north easternmost part of Cambodia, is situated in the western side of the Annamense Mits. and so possesses considerable, up to 1,500 m a.s.l. and hardly accessible mountains in the north at the Lao and Vietnam borders, of which I could see only the very low (240 m a.s.l.) foothills.
The core of the province is a very gentle dome-like elevation formed by almost flat basalt rocks, with the capitol Ban Lung in its center. Its smoothly rolling hills have been nearly completely deforested and occupied by vast rubber (mostly south of Ban Lung) or cashew (mostly north of Ban Lung) plantations, leaving no room for any other tree and allowing very scarce grass on generally barren dark-red ground. Some patches of Gewea trees are old and looking like a loose forest; they are presently logged and replaced by young saplings, so the land for a long time has been undergoing plantation ISSN 2412-1908; http://journal.asu.ru/biol turnover. Only scarce tops of the most considerable (but actually very low) hills are occupied by tiny forest remnants, often just being logged when I saw them in 2013. Waterfalls are another reason for the locals to leave poor forest remnants in this area. Forest strips are as a rule left between the course of a river with a waterfall and plantations, although sometimes they are just a few trees wide. Only O'Sieng Lei waterfalls were surrounded by a considerable (ca 9 x 5 km) area of forest, although substantially disturbed. A semi-evergreen type, with Dipterocarpus alatus Roxb, mostly represents the forests in Ratanakiri Province are predominating, maybe together with some similar species. This forest type is somewhat open so that huge trees are well seen even from inside the forest. Among them, sparse tall but small-leaved bamboo and rattan palms are recognised in the canopy.
The remarkable crater Lake Yak Lom is perfectly round (750 x 720 m), and said to be up to 48 m deep and to have been formed 700 thousand years ago. Its banks and the crater inner slopes, formed by large basalt plates, are overgrown with tall dipterocarp forest and bamboo thickets.
The Virachey National Park, occupying the north-easternmost mountainous part of the province and country is bordered from the south by one of the major Cambodian rivers, Se San or Tonle San River, which is broad and has barren clayey bluffs and banks. Its level strongly depends on the dam upstream in Vietnam. One of the main site inhabited there, Yorn village (Phum Yorn), is situated on the medium-sized O'Tabok River and is inhabited by the Brau minority; there first patches of the retained forest appeared. The area deeper into the 'National Park' was mostly logged semi-evergreen dipterocarp forest, with sparse tall trees left but generally replaced by bamboo thickets, with small brooks at the time of observation being chains of pools. A very specific type of habitats are 'veals', patches of fine grassy savannah formed by open stand of low trees, mostly Dipterocarpus obtusifolius Tejism. ex Miq., on a flat rocky basis. One of them was situated on the flat surface of Kong Kreav hill being the farest point of my examination. There we saw wild buffalo pitfalls at a small pool.

Mondulkiri Province
Mondulkiri Province (literally 'the Mountain of Mandala'), the largest in Cambodia (14,288 km 2 ), is situated in the east of the country and occupies the western part and slopes of the Central Plateau of the Annamense Mts. Its western outskirts are covered with a large (ca 35 x 20 km) and still nearly undisturbed evergreen Seima Protected Forest (in fact protected only from logging, and maybe not for long) occupying gentle ridges at 150-600 m a.s.l. The latter elevation seems to be a limit of dense evergreen forest in this area. The plateau, where the province capitol Sen Monorom is situated, is mostly s elevated to 600-850 m a.s.l. It is covered with grassy savannah with open tree stand and patches of evergreen forest in valleys of brooks and rivulets. It has a warm but not hot montane climate round the year. The area is still thinly populated (4.3 persons/ km 2 over the province) and not so much disturbed. The most conspicuous disturbance there is presence of large pine plantations. There is a forested Phnom Nimlyr Mt., 935 (or 982) m a.s.l. at the Vietnamese border, which I did not explore, yet it is only about 100 m higher than the plateau at Dak Dam village, inhabited by the Pnong (Bunong) minority, which I studied quite thoroughly. One can see in Google Earth that any forest disappear behind the Vietnamese border, hence the Cambodian territory is still a refuge of the peculiar nature of this area.
The area to the north-east of Sen Monorom, where the highest in Cambodia Buu Sraa Waterfall is situated, is somewhat less elevated (400-600 m a.s.l.) and more flat, although still resting on volcanic plates. It was, and partly still is covered with deciduous dry dipterocarp forests, obviously being in the rain shadow of the Plateau; nevertheless the river valley below the waterfall is clad with evergreen forest. This area is more populated and largely converted to farmland. It is crossed by three large rivers. A new good road has been recently constructed from Sen Monorom to Ban Lung, Ratanakiri. For 16 km NNE of Sen Monorom it goes through scarcely disturbed and well forested plateau and then descend to lowland almost completely turned into rubber plantations for quite a distance.

List of localities
The coordinates are given in decimal degrees. Usually their range for the area actually studied in each locality is indicated (after the decimal point). The elevations above the sea level are followed with 'm'. The locality data are provided in the geographical order. To avoid confusion of numerals, localities are also denoted by conventional nicknames used in this series of papers. They partly coince with nicknames given and used in my odonatological publications, which are enclosed in single quotations . These nicknames follow the locality ordinal numbers after back slash, both underlined. To avoid confusion with the previous and forthcoming communications of this series, and since some localities can hopefully be revisited in future, the numeration continues that of the previous communication (Kosterin, 2019a). Disposition of the localities examined is shown on the map of Fig. 1 67\Lake Yak Lom: a perfectly round crater lake, 720 x 750 m, with a clean warm water, banks partly rocky, overgrown with bamboo and/or dipterocarp forest occupying low crater inner slopes, 2.5-3-3 km ESE of Ban Lung,302 m. 68\Orolestes pool: a shallow hot pool ca 50x20 m where two converging gullies meet a road embankment; a small dipterocarp forest remnant at a hill, a small banana plantation on slopes, rubber plantations around, 7 km NEE of Ban Lung, 13.7475-7478 N, 107.0469-0472 E, 368 m. For more information about the localities examined, including the landscape and habitat photos, see my odonatological publications concerning Ratanakiri  and Mondulkiri (Kosterin, 2016) Provinces.

Results
The list of butterfly species identified by photos is given below as accompanied with localities, dates and, where possible, sex. For some species a short comment is added. The taxa for the first time reported for Cambodia in scientific literature are marked with asterisk (*). Presence or absence of Cambodian reports in previous publications was inferred from the summarising Internet site 'Butterflies of Indochina' by Yutaka Inayoshi (2019), the paper by Monastyrskii et al. (2011) and the previous communication of this series (Kosterin, 2019a). Photographs taken in nature (not to scale) illustrate these new country records, as well as most provisional records. Evaluation of rarity of these taxa in the neighbouring Thailand according to Ek-Amnuay (2006)  Papilio clytia clytia (Linnaeus, 1758) § -Ra: ♂ f. onape (Moore, 1979) Waterfall, 2.06.2013;♂ and ♀, 66\Lake Kan Seng, 31.05.2013;67\Lake Yak Lom, 6.06.2013. Mo: ♀, 88\Dak Dam, 16.06.2014♂♂, 90\Pulung River, 10.06.2014;♂, 90\Pulung River, 25.06.2018;♀, 96\Loringae brook, 9.06.2014.

Pieridae
Pierinae Appias albina darada (Felder et Felder, [1865] in the UNF cell. They occurred together with regular specimens with usual markings (Fig. 3) (Moore, 1886) but, unlike these species, no any spot inside the cell. Also UNF without apical dark wash (unlike E. sari), the UPF black border is seen through as having a deep incision (as in E. hecabe and E. andersoni), but the HW outer margin is rounded rather than subungulate (unlike E. hecabe) (Fig. 4). In the photograph of Fig. 5 (Figs 8-9). The UPF pattern (Fig. 9) fits more Poritia erycinoides elsiei (Felder et Felder, 1865) because of the black areas reduced in the upper part, leaving considerable blue patches in postdiscal and sumbarginal areas but enhanced in space 1b harbouring two black spots. However, the greenish-light-blue ground colour fits P. hewitsoni. Since the iridescent metallic colour seems to be a better species recognition cue than pattern details, which are quite variable in males of both species, I incline to identify this insect as P. hewitsoni.  (Fig. 11). The doubtless belonging to the alitaeus-group, absence of a spot at the base of space 10 on UNF and UNS maculation hardly darker than the background leads to A. elopura (Corbet, 1941;Eliot, 1957;Seki et al, 1991), while absence of a purple wash on UNS to its undescribed Indochinese subspecies (Inayoshi, 2019).