Insect

Sandalwood defoliator

Amata passalis

Sandalwood defoliator (Amata passalis) photographed by Devendra Bhardwaj — Image: Devendra Bhardwaj · iNaturalist · CC BY-NC 4.0 · Vaishali Nagar, Jaipur, Rajasthan · Resized

Scientific name: Amata passalis
Family: Erebidae, order Lepidoptera
Group: Insect

A wasp in disguise: really a day-flying moth.

Spot it Dark wings with clear yellow windows and a banded, wasp-like body.
Home Forests, scrub and farmland of South Asia.
Food web Caterpillars chew leaves; adults sip nectar; the wasp look warns off birds.
Why it matters Caterpillars and adults feed birds and spiders, linking leaves to predators; its wasp disguise shows how mimicry protects prey.

Read more: Amata passalis on Wikipedia

Sources and credits

Records and field notes

RajasthanDevendra Bhardwaj has 2 verified records of this species on iNaturalist in 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 Not peer reviewed.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.

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