Insect

Crimson-speckled Flunkey

Utetheisa pulchella

Crimson-speckled Flunkey (Utetheisa pulchella) photographed by Devendra Bhardwaj — Image: Devendra Bhardwaj · iNaturalist · CC BY-NC 4.0 · Vaishali Nagar, Jaipur, Rajasthan · Resized

Scientific name: Utetheisa pulchella
Family: Erebidae, order Lepidoptera
Group: Insect

A pretty white moth that tastes bad to enemies.

Spot it White wings dotted with black and red.
Home Grass and fields.
Food web Caterpillars eat rattlepod plants and pass the bitterness to the moth.
Why it matters Its bitter taste and bright warning colours teach predators to avoid it; it also pollinates flowers.

Read more: Utetheisa pulchella on Wikipedia

Sources and credits

Records and field notes

RajasthanDevendra Bhardwaj has 2 verified records of this species on iNaturalist, between 2016 and 2025, in Jaipur.^[20]

Sources

Devendra Bhardwaj. iNaturalist observations and notes, with place and date (inaturalist.org/people/devendrabhardwaj) (field record). The observer's own dated records and notes, with places. Statements in his notes are his own and were not independently checked by KJVF.
GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and GBIF species data (family, order, Hindi names, IUCN category) (database). Open biodiversity data. Used for classification, Hindi common names and the IUCN category where one is given.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (opening lines of each species article, CC BY-SA 4.0). The link on each entry goes to the article (reference). Not peer reviewed. Only the opening description is used, and statements about origin or medicinal use are left out.
Short introductions and key points written with AI help (Google Gemini and Claude) and checked against GBIF where possible (reference). AI-assisted text for general readers. Please check important details before relying on them.

The tag before each record shows the place it was checked for.

More in Insects and pollinators