research article butterfly diversity of indian institute of forest...

Research ArticleButterfly Diversity of Indian Institute of Forest ManagementBhopal Madhya Pradesh India

Sprih Harsh

WWF-India Mandla Madhya Pradesh 481661 India

Correspondence should be addressed to Sprih Harsh sprihharshgmailcom

Received 17 July 2014 Revised 12 October 2014 Accepted 16 November 2014 Published 25 November 2014

Academic Editor Rostislav Zemek

Copyright copy 2014 Sprih Harsh This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License whichpermits unrestricted use distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited

A study to find out the diversity of butterflies at the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM) Bhopal was carried out over aperiod of six months from October 2013 to March 2014 A total of 55 butterfly species belonging to 5 families namely Hesperiidae(7 species) Papilionidae (4 species) Pieridae (10 species) Lycaenidae (13 species) and Nymphalidae (21 species) were recorded(with photographic record) during the study from three different habitats of campus open scrub dry deciduous and urbanizedhabitat Shannon diversity indices and Pieloursquos evenness index were calculated for all the habitats Shannon index was found to behighest for open scrub (376) Out of 54 species Eurema brigittawas themost dominant species followed by Eurema hecabe Junonialemonias and Phalanta phalantha Dominance of these species can be explained by the presence of their larval and host plants inthe campus

1 Introduction

Butterflies are one of the most conspicuous species of Earthrsquosbiodiversity Being extremely responsive to any changes intheir environment namely temperature humidity light andrainfall patterns [1ndash4] these insects are identified as usefulbioindicators They have different requirements for differenthabitat types for mating breeding and nectaring and arethus in sync with the diversity and quality of their habitats

The present study aims to examine the diversity anddistribution of butterflies across three different habitatsnamely dry deciduous open scrub and urbanized habitat Achecklist of butterfly species is also provided

2 Materials and Methods

21 Study Area The study was done in Indian Institute ofForest Management Bhopal (23208371∘N and 77384417∘E)from July 2012 to March 2013 The location of campus builton a hill at an elevation of about 556m and surroundedby water on three sides along with the wide range ofclimatic conditions that it passes through brings in diverse

structure of habitats The major types of vegetation includedgrasslands open scrub forest and dry deciduous forest andbamboo groves The study was conducted in 12 transects(each approximately 300 to 500m long) covering an area of93-hectare campus

For our study transects were divided into three habitatsaccording to general landscape attributes and vegetationpresent thereThe chief habitat types were as follows (1) openscrub (2) dry deciduous and (3) urbanized habitat

22 Butterfly Survey The survey of butterfly was done usingPollardwalkmethod [5 6] from 8 am to 10 amThe butterflieswere observed within 25 meters to the left and right sideand five meters in front of the observer Butterflies wereobserved captured identified and released immediately atthe spot of capture A butterfly net was used for this purposeMany of the species were photographed in the wildThe deadspecimens many of them not in very good condition werekept in butterfly collection boxes Collecting live specimenswas avoided during the study

Hindawi Publishing CorporationJournal of InsectsVolume 2014 Article ID 254972 4 pageshttpdxdoiorg1011552014254972

2 Journal of Insects

23 Data Analysis

(A) Shannon Index (1198671015840) Species diversity was calculatedusing the Shannon Index [8]

1198671015840

= minussum119901119894ln 119901119894 (1)

Here119901119894is the proportion of the 119894th species in the total sample

The number of species (species richness) in the communityand their evenness in abundance (or equitability) are the twoparameters that define1198671015840

(B) Pieloursquos Evenness Index (Equitability) or 1198691015840 The speciesevenness is the proportion of individuals among the speciesEvenness of species indicates their relative abundance on site[8 9]

1198691015840

=1198671015840

ln 119878 (2)

Here 119878 is the number of species present in the site

3 Results

A total of 55 butterfly species with a total of 815 individualsbelonging to 5 families were recorded (with photographicrecord) during the study The butterfly list along with theirabundance in different habitats is given in Table 1 There are8 species with lowest individual number having abundanceless than 5 in all the three habitats The three most abundantspecies are Eurema brigitta (with 48 individuals) followed byEurema hecabe (with 45 individuals) and Junonia lemonias(with 34 individuals) The greatest number of all these threespecies occurred in open scrub Out of 55 species 52 werefound in open scrub followed by 49 species in dry deciduoushabitat and then 44 species in urbanized habitat A totalof 815 individuals were recorded from the campus withhighest abundance in open scrub (119899 = 359) followed by drydeciduous habitat (119899 = 277) and urbanized habitat (119899 = 179)Out of the five families of butterflies Nymphalidae were themost commonly recorded accounting for 38 (119899 = 21) oftotal species recorded followed by Lycaenidae 23 (119899 = 13)Pieridae 10 (119899 = 10) and Hesperiidae 12 (119899 = 7) oftotal species andminimumwas recorded for Papilionidae 7(119899 = 4)

Figure 1 shows that proportion of rare species tends toincrease from open scrub to dry deciduous to urbanizedhabitat The proportion of uncommon species is similar inopen scrub and dry deciduous environment while it tends todecrease in urbanized structure The proportion of commonspecies on the other hand indicates a decreasing trend fromopen scrub to dry deciduous to urbanized environment

The diversity of butterfly species in three different habitattypes in IIFM is presented in Table 2 The open scrub hasthe greatest species number with 52 species while urbanizedhabitat ranks lowest with 44 species The same order followsfor abundance and diversity index with highest diversityindex for open scrub and least for urbanized habitat andgreatest individual numbers for open scrub and least for

3235

44

12 127

128

405

101520253035404550

Open scrub Dry deciduous Urbanized

Prop

ortio

n (

)

RareUncommonCommon

Figure 1 Proportion of species abundance in each habitat NoteRare species with individuals less than 5 Uncommon species withindividuals between 6 and 10 Common species with individualsmore than 10

urbanized environmentThe greatest species number of openscrub habitat leads to the high diversity index although ithas a lower evenness index than dry deciduous habitat Theevenness index is almost similar in the entire three habitatswith the index being highest in dry deciduous habitat wherethere is not any dominating species with high individualnumber

4 Discussion

Fifty-five species of butterflies were documented during thesurvey Open scrub the least disturbed was found to havethe highest species richness followed by dry deciduous habitatand the lowest in urbanized habitat the most disturbedThese results can be attributed to the presence of host andlarval plant species whose occurrence impacts distributionof butterflies [10] There are many studies that have shownhigher butterfly diversity in disturbed habitat or forest gapsthan that in dense forest or closed canopy [11ndash14] This studytherefore shows some sort of contradictory results whichmight be due to different levels of disturbance among thesehabitats more in open scrub in terms of human interferencein the form of fuel wood gathering cattle grazing forest fireand so forth but less in urbanized habitat where there arewell maintained gardens These human interferences resultin more gaps edges which provide more light and space anddiversity in plant structure to support more butterfly speciesthan natural forest [3 13 15] The correlation of disturbanceand occurrence of butterflies is attributed to the emergenceof secondary vegetation like Lantana camera Eupatoriumodoratum and so forth which are good food sources formany butterfly species [14]

One important aspect of study is the statistics of commonspecies between different habitats which indicates the betadiversity and how different (or similar) these habitats arein terms of the variety and abundance of species found inthem The open scrub and dry deciduous habitat showed

Journal of Insects 3

Table 1 List of butterfly species and their abundance in different habitats (Source [7])

Serial number Name Scientific name Author name of species Family Abundance1 Common Banded Awl Hasora chromus Pieter Cramer

Hesperiidae

122 Malabar Spotted Flat Celaenorrhinus ambareesa Frederic Moore 103 Indian Skipper Spialia galba Johan Christian Fabricius 14 Spotted Small Flat Sarangesa purendra Frederic Moore 35 Tricolored Pied Flat Coladenia indrani Frederic Moore 96 Bevanrsquos Swift Pseudobordo bevani Frederic Moore 117 Small Branded Swift Pelopidas mathias Johan Christian Fabricius 98 Common Mime Chilasa clytia Carolus Linnaeus

Papilionidae

109 Common Mormon Papilio polytes Carolus Linnaeus 1810 Lime Butterfly Papilio demoleus Carl Linnaeus 1611 Crimson Rose Atrophaneura hector Carl Linnaeus 912 Small Grass Yellow Eurema brigitta Pieter Cramer

Pieridae

4813 Common Grass Yellow Eurema hecabe Carl Linnaeus 4514 Spotless Grass Yellow Eurema laeta Jean Baptise Boisduval 3215 Common Emigrant Catopsilia pomona Johan Christian Fabricius 1116 Mottled Emigrant Catopsilia pyranthe Carl Linnaeus 1317 Plain Orange Tip Colotis eucharis Johan Christian Fabricius 518 CommonWanderer Pareronia valeria Carl Linnaeus 1919 Common Gull Cepora nerissa Johan Christian Fabricius 320 Common Jezebel Delias eucharis Dru Drury 221 Pioneer Belenois aurota Johan Christian Fabricius 1022 Guava Blue Deudorix isocrates Johan Christian Fabricius

Lycaenidae

1923 Zebra Blue Leptotes plinius Johan Christian Fabricius 724 Common Cerulean Jamides celeno Pieter Cramer 2725 Forget Me Not Catochrysops strabo Johan Christian Fabricius 2226 Rounded Pierrot Tarucus nara Arthur Gardiner Butler 827 Dark Pierrot Tarucus ananda Lionel De Niceville 728 Dark Grass Blue Zizeeria karsandra Frederic Moore 2129 Pale Grass Blue Pseudozizeeria maha Vincenz Kollar 1130 Lesser Grass Blue Zizina otis Johan Christian Fabricius 1431 Tiny Grass Blue Zizula hylax Johan Christian Fabricius 832 Gram Blue Euchrysops cnejus Johan Christian Fabricius 933 Small Cupid Chilades parrhasius Johan Christian Fabricius 834 Lime Blue Chilades lajus Pieter Cramer 1135 Blue Tiger Tirumala limniace Pieter Cramer

Nymphalidae

2236 Striped Tiger Danaus genutia Pieter Cramer 2137 Plain Tiger Danaus chrysippus Carl Linnaeus 2338 Glassy Tiger Parantica aglea Caspar Stoll 2439 Anomalous Nawab Polyura agraria Dru Drury 640 Common Evening Brown Melanitis leda Carl Linnaeus 2941 CommonThreering Ypthima asterope Klug 342 Common Fourring Ypthima huebneri Kirby 443 Tawny Coster Acraea violae Carl Linnaeus 1044 Common Leopard Phalanta phalantha Dru Drury 3245 Common Sailer Neptis hylas Carl Linnaeus 1146 Baronet Euthalia nais Forster 2147 Blue Pansy Junonia orithya Carl Linnaeus 2548 Yellow Pansy Junonia hierta Johan Christian Fabricius 1149 Chocolate Pansy Junonia iphita Pieter Cramer 1250 Grey Pansy Junonia atlites Carl Linnaeus 951 Lemon Pansy Junonia lemonias Carl Linnaeus 34


Table 1 Continued

Serial number Name Scientific name Author name of species Family Abundance52 Great Eggfly Hypolimnas bolina Carl Linnaeus 1953 Danaid Eggfly Hypolimnas misippus Carl Linnaeus 1754 Autumn Leaf Doleschallia bisaltide Pieter Cramer 255 Common Crow Euploea core Pieter Cramer 12

Table 2 Results of different ecological indices for different habitats

Ecological indices Open scrubDry

deciduoushabitat

Urbanizedhabitat

Evenness (119869) 094 096 093Species richness (119878) 52 49 44Total abundance 359 277 179Shannon-Wienerdiversity index (119867) 376 374 353

highest number of shared species (47 species) as these areasare relatively more rich in food resources in terms of nectarsfor butterflies Species community structure was differentamong habitats but rather similar in the open scrub anddry deciduous habitat Many species of butterflies dependon remnant vegetation or secondary forest for survivalespecially in urban areas [15 16] So for the conservationof species in human dominated landscape any institutionalcampus maintaining high plant diversity and different typesof habitats is a good option

Conflict of Interests

The author declares that there is no conflict of interestsregarding the publication of this paper

References

[1] D DMurphy and S BWeiss ldquoA long-termmonitoring plan fora threatened butterflyrdquoConservation Biology vol 2 pp 367ndash3741988

[2] H R Sparrow TD Sisk P R Ehrlich andDDMurphy ldquoTech-niques and guidelines for monitoring neotropical butterfliesrdquoConservation Biology vol 8 no 3 pp 800ndash809 1994

[3] K Spitzer J Jaros J Havelka and J Leps ldquoEffect of small-scale disturbance on butterfly communities of an Indochinesemontane rainforestrdquo Biological Conservation vol 80 no 1 pp9ndash15 1997

[4] T Brereton D B Roy I Middlebrook M Botham and MWarren ldquoThe development of butterfly indicators in the UnitedKingdom and assessments in 2010rdquo Journal of Insect Conserva-tion vol 15 no 1 pp 139ndash151 2011

[5] E Pollard ldquoAmethod for assessing changes in the abundance ofbutterfliesrdquo Biological Conservation vol 12 no 2 pp 115ndash1341977

[6] E Pollard D O Elias M J Skelton and J A Thomas ldquoAmethod of assessing the abundance of butterflies in MonksWood National Nature Reserve in 1973rdquo Entomologistrsquos Gazettevol 26 pp 79ndash88 1975

[7] I Kehimkar The Book of Indian Butterflies Bombay NaturalHistory Society 2008

[8] A E Magurran Ecological Diversity and Its MeasurementChapman amp Hall London UK 1988

[9] E C Pielou An Introduction to Mathematical Ecology vol 286John Wiley New York NY USA 1969

[10] A D Tiple AM Khurad and R L H Dennis ldquoButterfly diver-sity in relation to a human-impact gradient on an Indian uni-versity campusrdquo Nota Lepidopterologica vol 30 no 1 pp 179ndash188 2007

[11] K Spitzer V Novotny M Tonner and J Leps ldquoHabitat pref-erences distribution and seasonality of the butterflies (Lepi-doptera Papilionoidea) in a montane tropical rain forest Viet-namrdquo Journal of Biogeography vol 20 no 1 pp 109ndash121 1993

[12] J Hill K Hamer J Tangah and M Dawood ldquoEcology of trop-ical butterflies in rainforest gapsrdquo Oecologia vol 128 no 2 pp294ndash302 2001

[13] K CHamer J KHill L A Lace andAM Langan ldquoEcologicaland biogeographical effects of forest disturbance on tropicalbutterflies of Sumba Indonesiardquo Journal of Biogeography vol24 no 1 pp 67ndash75 1997

[14] B Wood and M P Gillman ldquoThe effects of disturbance onforest butterflies using two methods of sampling in TrinidadrdquoBiodiversity and Conservation vol 7 no 5 pp 597ndash616 1998

[15] R B Blair ldquoBirds and butterflies along an urban gradient sur-rogate taxa for assessing biodiversityrdquo Ecological Applicationsvol 9 no 1 pp 164ndash170 1999

[16] M K Saikia J Kalita and P K Saikia ldquoEcology and con-servation needs of nymphalid butterflies in disturbed tropicalforest of easternHimalayan biodiversity hotspot Assam IndiardquoInternational Journal of Biodversity Conservation vol 1 no 8pp 231ndash250 2009

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Genetics Research International


Advances in

Virolog y

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Nucleic AcidsJournal of

Volume 2014

Stem CellsInternational



Enzyme Research



Microbiology


23 Data Analysis

(A) Shannon Index (1198671015840) Species diversity was calculatedusing the Shannon Index [8]

1198671015840

= minussum119901119894ln 119901119894 (1)

Here119901119894is the proportion of the 119894th species in the total sample

The number of species (species richness) in the communityand their evenness in abundance (or equitability) are the twoparameters that define1198671015840

(B) Pieloursquos Evenness Index (Equitability) or 1198691015840 The speciesevenness is the proportion of individuals among the speciesEvenness of species indicates their relative abundance on site[8 9]

1198691015840

=1198671015840

ln 119878 (2)

Here 119878 is the number of species present in the site

3 Results

A total of 55 butterfly species with a total of 815 individualsbelonging to 5 families were recorded (with photographicrecord) during the study The butterfly list along with theirabundance in different habitats is given in Table 1 There are8 species with lowest individual number having abundanceless than 5 in all the three habitats The three most abundantspecies are Eurema brigitta (with 48 individuals) followed byEurema hecabe (with 45 individuals) and Junonia lemonias(with 34 individuals) The greatest number of all these threespecies occurred in open scrub Out of 55 species 52 werefound in open scrub followed by 49 species in dry deciduoushabitat and then 44 species in urbanized habitat A totalof 815 individuals were recorded from the campus withhighest abundance in open scrub (119899 = 359) followed by drydeciduous habitat (119899 = 277) and urbanized habitat (119899 = 179)Out of the five families of butterflies Nymphalidae were themost commonly recorded accounting for 38 (119899 = 21) oftotal species recorded followed by Lycaenidae 23 (119899 = 13)Pieridae 10 (119899 = 10) and Hesperiidae 12 (119899 = 7) oftotal species andminimumwas recorded for Papilionidae 7(119899 = 4)

Figure 1 shows that proportion of rare species tends toincrease from open scrub to dry deciduous to urbanizedhabitat The proportion of uncommon species is similar inopen scrub and dry deciduous environment while it tends todecrease in urbanized structure The proportion of commonspecies on the other hand indicates a decreasing trend fromopen scrub to dry deciduous to urbanized environment

The diversity of butterfly species in three different habitattypes in IIFM is presented in Table 2 The open scrub hasthe greatest species number with 52 species while urbanizedhabitat ranks lowest with 44 species The same order followsfor abundance and diversity index with highest diversityindex for open scrub and least for urbanized habitat andgreatest individual numbers for open scrub and least for

3235

44

12 127

128

405

101520253035404550

Open scrub Dry deciduous Urbanized

Prop

ortio

n (

)

RareUncommonCommon

Figure 1 Proportion of species abundance in each habitat NoteRare species with individuals less than 5 Uncommon species withindividuals between 6 and 10 Common species with individualsmore than 10

urbanized environmentThe greatest species number of openscrub habitat leads to the high diversity index although ithas a lower evenness index than dry deciduous habitat Theevenness index is almost similar in the entire three habitatswith the index being highest in dry deciduous habitat wherethere is not any dominating species with high individualnumber

4 Discussion

Fifty-five species of butterflies were documented during thesurvey Open scrub the least disturbed was found to havethe highest species richness followed by dry deciduous habitatand the lowest in urbanized habitat the most disturbedThese results can be attributed to the presence of host andlarval plant species whose occurrence impacts distributionof butterflies [10] There are many studies that have shownhigher butterfly diversity in disturbed habitat or forest gapsthan that in dense forest or closed canopy [11ndash14] This studytherefore shows some sort of contradictory results whichmight be due to different levels of disturbance among thesehabitats more in open scrub in terms of human interferencein the form of fuel wood gathering cattle grazing forest fireand so forth but less in urbanized habitat where there arewell maintained gardens These human interferences resultin more gaps edges which provide more light and space anddiversity in plant structure to support more butterfly speciesthan natural forest [3 13 15] The correlation of disturbanceand occurrence of butterflies is attributed to the emergenceof secondary vegetation like Lantana camera Eupatoriumodoratum and so forth which are good food sources formany butterfly species [14]

One important aspect of study is the statistics of commonspecies between different habitats which indicates the betadiversity and how different (or similar) these habitats arein terms of the variety and abundance of species found inthem The open scrub and dry deciduous habitat showed




Hesperiidae


Papilionidae


Pieridae


Lycaenidae


Nymphalidae



Table 1 Continued




deciduoushabitat

Urbanizedhabitat





References
























Volume 2014

Zoology






















Advances in

Virolog y



Volume 2014




Enzyme Research



Microbiology




Hesperiidae


Papilionidae


Pieridae


Lycaenidae


Nymphalidae



Table 1 Continued




deciduoushabitat

Urbanizedhabitat





References
























Volume 2014

Zoology






















Advances in

Virolog y



Volume 2014




Enzyme Research



Microbiology


Table 1 Continued




deciduoushabitat

Urbanizedhabitat





References
























Volume 2014

Zoology






















Advances in

Virolog y



Volume 2014




Enzyme Research



Microbiology








Volume 2014

Zoology






















Advances in

Virolog y



Volume 2014




Enzyme Research



Microbiology

research article butterfly diversity of indian institute of forest...

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