Vestalis submontana

Description

Vestalis submontana is a species of damselfly belonging to the family Calopterygidae. It is endemic to the Western Ghats of India. Frederic Charles Fraser described two new subspecies Vestalis gracilis amaena and Vestalis apicalis amaena in 1929 and later gave replacement names Vestalis gracilis montana and Vestalis apicalis submontana in 1934. The type specimens were from Nilgiri mountains in Western Ghats of South India.</ref> Matti Hämäläinen studied the type specimens of these taxa and other material preserved in collections of BMNH (London), IRSN (Brussels) and RMNH (Leiden) in 2011. He concluded that there is striking structural and colour differences which indicate that submontana is a distinct species. And its sympatric occurrence with V. apicalis and V. gracilis alone rules out its former subspecies status. So V. a. submontana is now considered as a separate species Vestalis submontana Fraser 1934 and Vestalis gracilis montana Fraser, 1934 a synonym of it.