Acridoid diversity, species composition and distributional pattern in Terai region of Uttarakhand, India

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.