Brownie or Browning ♀

Description:

A female Brownie or Browning, Miletus melanion melanion C.& R.Felder 1865 (Lycaenidae; Miletinae; Miletini). A Philippine endemic species, the ssp. M. m. melanion occurs in the islands of Batanes, Sarangani, Luzon, Marinduque, Mindanao, and Negros. Another Philippine ssp., euphranor, exists in Leyte and Mindoro islands.

Habitat:

Makiling Botanic Gardens, a 300-hectare protected forest park, situated at the lower elevations of the Mount Makiling Forest Reserve's Molawin-Dampalit watershed in Los Baños, Laguna.

Notes:

The genus Miletus Hübner 1819 is distributed from India to south China and through the Malay Archipelago and Philippines to New Guinea, it has been well known as a true SE Asian genus because most of all the previously known species within the genus are mainly distributed in the principal part of SE Asian subregion, with a few species extending to the north as far as south China but are not endemic there. Butterflies of the subfamily Miletinae (commonly called harvesters and woolly legs) are virtually unique in having predatory larvae. Miletinae are entirely aphytophagous (do not feed on plants). The ecology of the Miletinae is little understood, but adults and larvae live in association with ants, and most known species feed on Hemiptera (aphids, coccids, membracids, and psyllids), though some, like Liphyra, feed on the ants themselves. The butterflies, ants, and hemipterans, in some cases, seem to have complex symbiotic relationships benefiting all. (Wikipedia)