Acridid(Orthoptera) fauna of agricultural ecosystem in some
southern districts of Tamil Nadu, India
R. Ananthaselvi 1, P. Suresh 2, S. Janarthanan1, K.A.M. Karthikeyan 1 & I. Vijayakumar1
1,2 Thiagarajar Centre for Entomological
Science, Department of Zoology, Thiagarajar College
(Autonomous), Madurai, Tamil Nadu 625009, India
Email: 2 suresh_63@yahoo.com (corresponding author)
Date of publication (online): 26
September 2009
Date of publication (print): 26
September 2009
ISSN 0974-7907 (online) |
0974-7893 (print)
Editor: R.M. Sharma
Manuscript details:
Ms # o1621
Received 17 August 2006
Final received 21 January 2008
Finally accepted 10 September
2009
Citation: Ananthaselvi, R., P. Suresh, S. Janarthanan,
K.A.M. Karthikeyan & I. Vijayakumar(2009). Acridid (Orthoptera)
fauna of agricultural ecosystem in some southern districts of Tamil Nadu, India. Journal of
Threatened Taxa 1(9): 491-492.
Copyright: © R. Ananthaselvi, P. Suresh, S. Janarthanan,
K.A.M. Karthikeyan & I. Vijayakumar2009. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 UnportedLicense. JoTT allows unrestricted use of this article
in any medium for non-profit purposes, reproduction and distribution by
providing adequate credit to the authors and the source of publication.
Acknowledgement: The authors are
grateful to the Management, Thiagarajar College for
their support and encouragement.
The richness of
tropical insect fauna is beyond all earlier expectations (Stork 1988). Insects are the major components of animal
diversity in terms of number of species in most of the habitats and ecosystems. With the growing awareness the world over for
the need to understand and conserve biological diversity, there has been
interest in evaluating the insect richness and diversity of the Indian fauna (Gadagkar et al. 1990; Muraliranganet al. 1993; Sanjayan 1993). Acridids cause
extensive damage to both agroecosystem (COPR 1982)
and rangeland ecosystem (Hewitt & Onsanger 1983).
The presence and dominance of grasshoppers appear to be influenced not only by
the environmental gradients, but also by the species composition of plants as
well (Kemp et al. 1990).
Among
grasshoppers the acridids are the most important
group thus their diversity and distribution in agricultural ecosystem was
studied and reported here.
Acridids were collected
by sweep-net technique from the agricultural ecosystem (crop fields and grasslands)
of Madurai, Dindigul, Sivaganga,Virudhunagar, and Theni of
the Southern districts in Tamil Nadu, India during the years 2004 and
2005. The collected species were
identified adopting the conventional taxonomic procedures following the keys
prescribed by Dirsh (1961) and Kirby (1914). Acridids were
categorized based on their feeding guilds namely grass feeder (GF), dicot feeder (DF) and mixed feeder (MF) those feed on both
the groups of plants. They were further
designated as core and satellite species based on their abundance (Muralirangan et al. 1993).
Thirty-one
species of acridids were identified belonging to the
families Acrididae and Pyrgomorphidae(Table 1). The family Acrididae represented by 25 species (10 subfamilies and 22
genera) and the family Pyrgomorphidae comprised of
six species (five genera). The highest
number of species (six) recorded belong to subfamily Locustinaeof family Acrididae. The feeding guild of recorded acrididsrevealed that nine species are grass feeders, one species is a dicot feeder and 21 species are mixed feeders. Among the Acrididscollected, 18 species were recorded as core species and the other 13 species
were designated as satellite species based on their moderate or sporadic
distribution.
The species of
the subfamily Acridinae, Oxyinaeand Truxalinae were restricted to feed on
grasses. All the species of the family Pyrgomorphidae were able to feed on dicotplants except Poekilocerus pictus which had a very strict feeding pattern. Though,
recorded as a monophagous species, it feeds on some
other plants too. All the grasshopper
species were recorded throughout the study period including their temporal
variation in abundance. The acridid P. pictus was
recorded only during the months of September to December. Seasonal variation in grasshopper abundance
is in relation to host plant availability. And this study indicates that variation in distribution of acridids as core and satellite to the availability of host
plants, subject to prevailing ecological conditions.
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