Butterfly species diversity and distribution in protected forest areas of North-West Himalaya of India

Author: Sanjay D. Paunikar and Gaurav Sharma

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Abstract

The Himalaya North-West region heavily depends on water resources for irrigation, food, hydropower, sanitation, and industry, as well as for the functioning of many important ecosystem services. It is also identified as a mega hot spot for biological diversity. The Himalayan foret ecosystem is even not untouched from overexploitation, habitat loss and illegal trade of butterfly and other insect species. This region is also on the verge of modernization, urbanization and tourism activity that lead to degradation of natural habitat. Due to this, more challenges to study on the faunal diversity of North-West Hiamlaya region. Among the faunal diversity, Butterflies are one of the most important and significant insect species for the pollination in the forest as well as agro-ecocsytem. The field survey conducted to investigate the butterfly diversity and their distrubution in different protected forest areas of North-West Himalayan states, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand during the years of 2018-2019. The study revealed presence of 102 butterfly species distributed in 5 families, 18 subfamilies and 66 genera. During the present field investigations documented the dominant family was found to be 55 species of Nymphalidae (53.92%) with 10 subfamilies followed by 17 species of Pieridae (16.66%) with 2 subfamilies, 18 species of Lycaenidae (17.64%) with 2 subfamilies, whereas 7 species of Hesperiidae (6.86%) with 2 subfamilies and 5 species of Papilionidae were represented (4.95%) with 1 subfamily. Out of 102 species of butterflies recorded, 11 species are legally protected under Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. The three families, Pieridae (1), Nymphalidae (6) and Lycanidae (4) of 11 species recorded from study area belong to different Schedules of this act of which 2 species are in schedule I, 7 species in schedule II and 2 species in schgedule-IV. However, protected forest areas too are under severe anthropogenic activites like, farming pressure, construction of highways, dams, indiscriminate harvesting woods, leaves, fruits, seeds and human pressure due to tremendous flow of tourists was found a major threat to faunal diversity of the Indian Himalaya including North-West Himalaya. Therefore, more investigations are also still required in different ecological regimes to conserve the terrestrial ecosystem of the Himalayan region.

Keywords

Butterflies, Protected forest areas, North-West Himalaya, diversity, distribution

Conclusion

Our study emphasizes the significance of altitude and diverse habitat types structuring butterfly assemblage in different forest areas of North-West Himalaya. Thus, the butterfly diversity will help to establish the linkage of changing climate and biological phenomena as the area show a great variety of habitat and altitude when covering a small distance on the ground. Therefore, more investigations are also still required in different forest areas and ecological regimes to conserve the terrestrial ecosystem of the Himalayan region.

References

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How to cite this article

Sanjay D. Paunikar and Gaurav Sharma (2022). Butterfly species diversity and distribution in protected forest areas of North-West Himalaya of India. Biological Forum – An International Journal, 14(4): 1004-1015.