Acridoid diversity, species composition and distributional pattern in Terai region of Uttarakhand, India
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Acridoid diversity, species composition and distributional pattern in Terai region of Uttarakhand, India Hira Naz 1
&
Mohd. Kamil Usmani 1 & Mohd. Ali 1 & Sahar Mobin 1 & Mohd. Imran Khan 1
Received: 26 August 2019 / Accepted: 14 August 2020 # African Association of Insect Scientists 2020
Abstract Acridoids, commonly known as grasshoppers and locusts, are cosmopolitan, hervivorous, notorious pests of agricultural crops, potential bio-indicators for land management and one of the most dominant groups of class Insecta. This is the first report on diversity and distributional pattern of these insects from Terai region of Uttarakhand. Present explorations were made to know species diversity, species compostion, abundance and distributional pattern of Acridoid fauna in Udham Singh Nagar, Terai region of Uttarakhand, India. A total number of 847 specimens of acridoids were collected from seven different sites of Udham Singh Nagar having 22 species and 14 genera belonging to 2 families, 7 subfamilies, and 11 tribes by sweep net and hand picking method during the survey period 2017–2018. Family Acrididae was found to be more diverse with 20 species (87%) followed by family Pyrgomorphidae with only 3 species (13%). Among subfamilies of family Acrididae, the subfamily Oxyinae was found to be most abundant and Gomphocerinae was least abundant. On the basis of number of genera, subfamily Oedipodinae was most dominant, followed by Catantopinae. On the basis of number of species, subfamily Oedipodinae was again found to be most dominant with 6 species followed by Oxyinae with 5 species, Catantopinae, Hemiacridinae, Gomphocerinae, Acridinae with 2 species each and the least dominant was Spathosterninae with only 1 species. The diversity indices for acridoid have been calculated for the first time from Terai region of Uttarakhand. Across the survey, Simpson’s diversity index (D’) & Shannon diversity index (H′) was calculated as 0.8333 & 2.195 respectively, which means that the acridoid population is moderately diverse in the surveyed area. Keywords Grasshoppers . Acrididae . Udham Singh Nagar . Locust
Introduction Grasshoppers and locusts are one of the most important components in natural as well as transformed landscapes. Being the herbivorous insects, they are leading consumers of plant biomass and play a crucial role in the functioning of the ecosystem process worldwide. Moreover, when their population forms dense and highly mobile swarms that cause serious infestations to agricultural as well as non-agricultural vegetations. That is why they are one of the most catastrophic enemies of farmers. Destruction is not limited to only agricultural crops and rangeland, but the outbreak causes severe alterations to ecological processes * Hira Naz [email protected] 1
Department of Zoology, Section of Entomology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, U.P., India
across landscape. The complete devastation of vegetation results in soil erosion and increased runoff. These swarms also cause scarcity of foo
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