Fly high

White dragontail

As long as she can remember, Sohini Vanjari, 32, has been fascinated by different aspects of butterfly ecology, which also helped her choose a career path. "When I was 17, I got a chance to visit an insect collection at the zoology department, Modern College, Pune, where I met Dr Hemant Ghate. And at the same time, I spotted a butterfly pupa in our backyard and I did not know what it was exactly.

Commander

Somehow, the timing was so perfect that I got the correct guidance from Ghate sir and could witness a miraculous butterfly-emerging event. I just fell in love with nature's wonders that day and have been in love with butterflies ever since," she recalls.

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Vanjari has now started an Instagram page dedicated to these insects. "Butterflies are much more than beautiful wings and rearing caterpillars. It's a puzzle that will amaze and intrigue you to explore beyond what meets your eye. Apart from being a pollinator and an important link in most food chains, they are now being used as a well-studied, easy-to-breed research organism, to find answers in different fields like aerodynamics, light refraction, chemical communication, migration, genome studies, and the list goes on."

Sohini Vanjari

Vanjari also conducts online workshops that are designed to educate students and enthusiasts in different aspects of butterfly ecology and will even introduce them to ongoing research. They will be equipped to identify common butterflies around them and learn to see beyond their beauty.

@sohinivanjari, Instagram

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