Potanthus confucius

Potanthus confucius,^[1] the Chinese dart^[2] or Confucian dart,^[3] is a species of butterfly belonging to the family Hesperiidae.^[4] They are found from Sri Lanka and India^[2] to China and Japan and down to Sumatra and Java in Indonesia.^[3] Some museum specimens have also been reported to be from Palawan in the Philippines, but due to the absence of the species in Borneo, it is possible that these were mislabeled or misidentified.^[5]

Chinese dart
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Hesperiidae
Genus:	Potanthus
Species:	P. confucius
Binomial name
Potanthus confucius (Felder & Felder, 1862)

Subspecies

• P. c. diana (Evans, 1932) - Maharashtra to Kerala
• P. c. dushta (Fruhstorfer, 1911) - Sikkim, northeast India to Indochina
• P. c. nina (Evans, 1932) - Andaman and Nicobar Islands^[2]

Potanthus confucius diana as seen in Mangalore, Karnataka

Potanthus confucius seen at Rajbari, Bangladesh in 2023