New record of Lucilia cuprina (Wiedemann, 1830) (Diptera: Calliphoridae) from the Trans-Himalayan Region, cold arid desert of Kargil Ladakh, India

: Lucilia spp. commonly known as the green bottle fly, is cosmopolitan in distribution and well documented from different parts of the world. They have medical, forensic and veterinary importance. In the present study, Lucilia cuprina (Wiedemann 1830) is documented for the first time from the Trans-Himalayan region of Kargil Ladakh. It was found that this fly is fairly widespread in the study area. These flies show strong positive correlation with the temperature and weak positive correlation with the relative humidity. Therefore, fly abundance was recorded maximum in midsummer (July & August) and least in April & October; however, no fly activity was seen during winter months from November through March.


SHORT COMMUNICATION
decomposing organic matter wherein the larval stages are completed.The 3 rd instar larvae stop feeding and pupate in the soil; however, adults are free-living (Falk 2016).This fly species has been found to be useful in forensic science, causes myiasis in humans and other vertebrates, and acts as a mechanical vector for a variety of pathogens such as nematodes, helminths, protozoans, fungus, bacteria, and viruses (Heath 1982;Stevens & Wall 1996;Fetene & Worku 2009;Akbarzadeh et al. 2015;Hasson 2017;Tomberlin et al. 2017).
This species is well documented from the Oriental Region of the Indian subcontinent, but no records of this fly are known from the Trans-Himalayan region and its adjoining areas including Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir (Nandi 2002;Nandi & Sinha 2004;Bharti 2011).Here we report L. cuprina for the first time from the Trans-Himalayan region of Kargil Ladakh and report its distribution and seasonal abundance.The current study will be useful in examining the other aspects of this fly in the Trans-Himalayan area, including its potential use in medicine, forensics, and veterinary science.

Material and Methods
Kargil is a district under the administration of UT, Ladakh, India in Trans-Himalayan region, situated 30 to 35 degree N and 75 to 77 degree E, with an area of about 14,036 km 2 .The survey was conducted for three consecutive years from April 2018 to March 2021.To ease the survey, based on geography, topography, and climatic condition, the study area was divided into eight main sites, viz.: Drass, Kargil town, Batalik, Chiktan, Wakha (Shargole), Saliskot, Sankoo, and Panikhar (Figure 1).The survey was carried out on a monthly basis by using plastic bottle traps baited with 100 g unwashed day old goat/sheep stomach (Hussain et al. 2022(Hussain et al. , 2022)).On each visit, three traps were installed in all the above mentioned study sites at a distance of about 100 m for three hours extending from 1100 h to 1400 h, around places like slaughterhouses, local latrines, meat shops, and waste dumping areas.The survey was not conducted during the winter months (November to March) as the climatic conditions were not feasible and no fly activity was observed at average temperatures below 4 o C. The trapped flies were killed using ethyl acetate/chloroform.Based on their morphology L. cuprina was sorted out, counted and identified up to species level by using available keys (Wallman 2001;Carvalho & Mello-Patiu 2008;Whitmore et al. 2020).The total number of flies captured from each site/visit were pooled and drawn against each month to access the seasonal abundance.Photographs were captured using Leica S9i stereo-zoom binocular microscope fitted with camera and edited with Adobe Photoshop 7.0.Data was analysed using software SPSS 16.0 and graphs were plotted using software Origin pro 8. Climatic data of the district Kargil was obtained from the Indian Metereological Department, Metereological Center, Rambagh, Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir UT, India.18.v.2018, M. Hussain;Batalik, 2♀, 34.66°N, 76.34°E, 2,814 m, 11.v.2018, M. Hussain;Chiktan, 3♀, 34.46°N, 76.52°E, 3,294 m, 18.vi.2018, M. Hussain;Wakha, 2♀, 34.37°N, 76.39°E, 3,371 m, 18.vi.2018, M. Hussain;Trespone, 1♀, 43.41°N, 76.03°E, 2,849 m, 16.vii.2018, M. Hussain;Sankoo, 3♀, 34.28°N, 75.96°E, 2,985 m, 16.vii.2018, M. Hussain;Panikhar, 1♀, 34.13°N, 75.95°E, 3,229 m, 16.vii.2018,M. Hussain.

Diagnosis
Body metallic green; gena white with black hairs; posterior slope of humeral callus with 0-4 hairs; notopleuron surface between last notopleuron seta and edge of notopleuron with 2-5 hairs; central occipital area below each inner vertical seta with one setula; ketatergite bar; wings hyaline; basicostae bright yellow; stem vein bar above; lower calypters bar above; frontoclypeal membrane dark brown; width of frontal stripe (frontal vitta) as wide as parafrontal plate; color of the fore femora dark metallic green (Image 2-9).
Being a cold blooded animal, the activity of L. cuprina is directly influenced by climatic factors like temperature, humidity, rainfall, and snowfall.Kargil, being a part of a cold climate desert, shows great variation in the seasonal temperature ranging from -35 ⁰ C during midwinter to 40⁰C during midsummer (Behera et al. 2014).During the study it was recorded that this species showed a strong positive correlation with temperature (r = 0.868) and a weak positive correlation with relative humidity (r = 0.276).Lucilia spp.overwinters in both the larval and pupal stages (Wall et al. 2000;Rosati 2014).During the present study it was recorded that adult L. cuprina begin to appear in April with an average temperature of 13.95±1.4⁰C(Mean±SE), and reached its highest peak in August with an average temperature of 23.81±1.0⁰C(Mean±SE) and was not observed during winter months from November through March during which the ambient average temperature remained below 1.24±1.8⁰Cto -6.12±2.3⁰C(Mean±SE) (Figure 2).It was found that this species was most abundant in August, which recorded 119.00±14.0(Mean±SE) followed by July with 111.60±4.4(mean±SE) and the least (4.33±0.66;mean±SE) was recorded in the month of April.Statistical analysis (ANOVA, Duncan test) showed that there was no significant difference in the fly abundance in July and August; whereas, these two months showed significant difference in fly-abundance from rest of the months.These results corroborate with those of Brundage et al. (2011) andHussain et al. (2022).

Figure
Figure 1.Map of study area Kargil Ladakh.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Seasonal abundance of L. cuprina in Kargil Ladakh from April 2018 to March 2021.