Abstract

Diversity and abundance of insects in cropland of Himalayan Tarai region of Ramnagar, Uttarakhand

Rekha^*, Deepika Goswami, Deeksha Arya, Geetika Arya, Manisha Bisht, Apurva Joshi, and B.R. Kaushal

Department of Zoology, D.S.B. Campus, Kumaun University, Nainital-263002, Uttarakhand, India

Corresponding author e-mail: rekhayadav303@gmail.com

(Received: 04/07/2021; Revised: 29/11/2021; Accepted: 25/12/2021)

ABSTRACT

Species richness, species and trophic diversity and abundance of insects were studied in a cropland of Himalayan Tarai region of Ramnagar, Uttarakhand from Marc, 2017 to February, 2018. A total of 28 species belonging to 4 insect orders, 28 and 9 families were collected. Herbivores, predators and scavengers constituted the insect community of which herbivores were most preponderant. The sweep net method was used to explore the diversity of insects. On the basis of total number of recorded species, Lepidoptera was the most dominant order contributing 22 species followed by Odonota, Coleopter, and Hymenoptera (2 species each), respectively. Among the different species of the order, Lepidoptera was most dominant order which constituted 79.0 % of the total collected species. Shannon diversity index (H̅) was (2.033) followed by Evenness (0.6101) and Margalef’s index (4.342), respectively. A maximum number of individuals of the butterflies was recorded during the summer season. This work also focuses on identifying the major pollinators in different crops. These efforts work towards the goal of insect diversity conservation in this particular site. So far, no inclusive work on insect fauna in the cropland of the Himalayan Tarai region of Ramnagar which is an important area of Uttarakhand state has been done.

Keywords: Insect diversity, Cropland, Sawal Deh, Ramnagar.