Study on Lepidopteran Diversity of Pursurah, Hooghly, West Bengal
Shubhajit Maji
Maulana Azad College, University of Calcutta, India.
Aniruddha Chatterjee *
Scottish Church College, Kolkata, India.
Samrat Bhattacharjee
Scottish Church College, Kolkata, India.
Tapan Kumar Roy
Asutosh College, Kolkata, India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
The current study was conducted from different areas of Damodar and Mundeswari river basin, Pursurah block of Hooghly district of West Bengal during June 2021 to May 2022. The insect faunal diversity of this area seems not to have been investigated earlier. The study recorded 48 Lepidopteran species (41 Genera) belonging to 12 families, A total of 33 butterfly species belonging to the families of Nymphalidae (27%), Pieridae (10%), Papilionidae (15%), Lycaenidae (11%) and Hesperidae (6%) and 15 moth species belonging to Erebidae (15%), Sphingidae (4%), Geometridae (2%), Noctuidae (4%), Lasiocampidae (2%), Scythrididae (2%), Zygaenidae (2%) were identified in the present study. Based on specimens observed during the study, 19% species are very common, 42% are common, 20% are not rare, 19% are rare. During the study, we observed Blue Mormon, the region's largest butterfly and the second-largest butterfly species in India.
Keywords: Lepidoptera, Rhopalocera, Heterocera, diversity indices, relative abundance