Journal of Threatened Taxa |
www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 July 2023 | 15(7): 23621–23626
ISSN 0974-7907
(Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.8344.15.7.23621-23626
#8344 | Received 28
December 2022 | Final received 19 May 2023 | Finally accepted 31 May 2023
Preliminary observations of moth
fauna of Purna Wildlife Sanctuary, Gujarat, India
Preeti Choudhary 1 & Indu Sharma 2
1,2 Desert Regional Centre, Zoological
Survey of India, Jodhpur, Rajasthan 342005, India.
1 alliswell.0356@gmail.com, 2 induzsi@gmail.com
(corresponding author)
Editor: Sanjay Sondhi, Titli Trust, Dehradun, India. Date of publication: 26 July 2023 (online & print)
Citation: Choudhary, P. & I. Sharma (2023). Preliminary observations of moth
fauna of Purna Wildlife Sanctuary, Gujarat, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 15(7): 23621–23626. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.8344.15.7.23621-23626
Copyright: © Choudhary & Sharma 2023. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License. JoTT
allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and distribution of this article in any
medium by providing adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of
publication.
Funding: Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF & CC), Zoological Survey of India.
Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: Authors are thankful to the
director Dr. Dhriti
Banerjee, Zoological Survey of India for providing the necessary facilities and
encouragement.
Gujarat is the fifth largest
state of India and is situated on the western coast with a coastline of 1,600
km under the Kathiawar peninsula. There are 33 districts in Gujarat. Purna Wildlife Sanctuary (Dang District, Gujarat), known as
a hotspot for its biodiversity, is situated on the extreme northern side of the
Western Ghats. It has tropical moist deciduous forests with various flora and
fauna in it. It comprises two protected areas — Purna
Wildlife Sanctuary (WS) and Vansda National Park.
They are known to protect the precious fauna of the area but limited
information is available on the invertebrate fauna from the sanctuary. Purna WS is rich in its fauna because of its different
terrain, landscapes, and forest.
Purna Wildlife Sanctuary is located at
Dang District of Gujarat under the coordinates 20.91793°N, 73.7007°E with an
area of 160.84 km2. It has southern moist deciduous forests and
southern dry deciduous forests (Champion & Seth 1968; Singh et al. 2000),
with a normal rainfall of 1,600 mm annually. The topography of the WS is
undulant with an altitude range of 130─1100 m. Thus, the WS has a varied range
of flora and fauna. Moths play an important role as an indicator of the
environmental health of an ecosystem (Bachanda et al.
2014). Moth larvae are herbivores, pests of vegetables, and crops, thus
playing ecological roles throughout the life cycle (Scriber & Feeny 1979) while adults and larval stages are food sources
for other animals and some are night pollinators (Holt 2002; Hahn & Bruhl 2016).
In class Insecta,
moths are among the most varied groups (Soggard
2009). There are almost 1,65,000 species of moths throughout the world (Khan
2018), out of which about 12,000 species are described from India (Chandra
& Nema 2007; Bell & Scott 1937; Cotes & Swinhoe 1887─1889; Hampson 1892, 1894, 1895, 1896; Chandra
2007; Gurule & Nikam
2013; Smetacek 2011; Uniyal
et al. 2013; Sondhi & Sondhi
2016). Four-hundred-and-one species of moths have been recorded from Gujarat
(Nurse 1899; Mosse 1929; Gupta & Thakur 1990).
Further, no information is available on the moths from the Purna
WS and therefore the present study was conducted for the first time.
The survey of Purna
WS was carried out from 2019 to 2022. Various localities were visited—Bardipada range, Bheskatri range,
Kalibel range, and Singhana
range of Dang & Ahwa districts of Gujarat (Table
1)—and for the collection, night traps for about 5─6 hours was used for
trapping moths at night.
Observation and collection of
moths was done using a mercury vapour bulb of 200W on
a white sheet. A collection permit for moths was received from the Gujarat
Forest Department vide letter no. WLP/RES/28/C/119-120/2020-21 dated
01/09/2020.
Collected specimens were labeled
with locality labels in the field. Later on, they were sorted, relaxed, pinned,
identified up to the species level, and labelled. Their identification was done
with the help of identification keys, standard reference books, and available
literature. Further specimens are deposited at the National Zoological Collection
of Desert Regional Centre, Jodhpur.
Four-hundred-and-seven moth
specimens were collected and identified to 42 species under 39 genera and nine
families. During the study, it was found that Erebidae
is a dominant family of moths followed by Sphingidae,
Crambidae, Saturniidae, Geometridae, Lasiocampidae, Noctuidae, Limacodidae, and Pyralidae in Purna Wildlife
Sanctuary.
Table 1. Collection of data from
various localities of the study area.
|
|
District |
Sites surveyed |
Exs. collected |
|
1. |
Dang |
Bardipada range |
153 |
|
2. |
Bheskatri range |
26 |
|
|
3. |
Kalibel range |
141 |
|
|
4. |
Singhana range |
48 |
|
|
5. |
Ahwa |
Ahwa West range |
39 |
|
Total |
407 |
||
Table 2. List of preliminary
observation moth fauna from Purna Wildlife Sanctuary.
|
|
Scientific name |
Status |
|
Super family: Pyraloidea Family: Crambidae |
||
|
1 |
Botyodes asialis Guenée , 1854 |
Common |
|
2 |
Conogethes punctiferalis (Guenée
, 1854) |
Rare |
|
3 |
Cydalima laticostalis (Guenée
, 1854) |
Common |
|
4 |
Diaphania indica (Saunders, 1851) |
Common |
|
5 |
Parotis marginata (Hampson, 1893) |
Rare |
|
Super family: Noctuoidea Family: Erebidae |
||
|
6 |
Achaea janata
(Linnaeus,
1758) |
Common |
|
7 |
Amata cyssea
(Stoll,
[1782]) |
Rare |
|
8 |
Anomis flava Fabricius, 1775 |
Rare |
|
9 |
Argina astrea (Drury, 1773) |
Common |
|
10 |
Arna bipunctapex (Hampson, 1891) |
Rare |
|
11 |
Asota caricae (Fabricius, 1775) |
Common |
|
12 |
Asota ficus (Fabricius, 1775) |
Common |
|
13 |
Chalciope mygdon (Cramer, [1777]) |
Common |
|
14 |
Creatonotos gangis (Linnaeus, 1763) |
Common |
|
15 |
Eudocima phalonia (Linnaeus, 1763) |
Common |
|
16 |
Lymantria serva (Fabricius, 1793) |
Rare |
|
17 |
Lyncestis amphix (Cramer, 1777) |
Rare |
|
18 |
Nepita conferta (Walker, 1854) |
Rare |
|
19 |
Orvasca subnotata Walker, 1865 |
Rare |
|
20 |
Perina nuda (Fabricius, 1787) |
Common |
|
21 |
Spilarctia sp. |
Rare |
|
22 |
Spirama helicina (Hubner, 1824) |
Common |
|
23 |
Sphrageidus similis (Fuessly, 1775) |
Common |
|
24 |
Syntomoides imaon (Cramer, [1779]) |
Common |
|
25 |
Thyas coronata Fabricius (1775) |
Common |
|
26 |
Thyas honesta Hübner, [1824] |
Common |
|
27 |
Trigonodes disjuncta (Moore, 1882) |
Common |
|
28 |
Utetheisa lotrix (Cramer, 1779) |
Common |
|
Family: Noctuidae |
||
|
29 |
Spodoptera litura (Fabricius, 1775) |
Common |
|
Super family: Geometroidea Family: Geometridae |
||
|
30 |
Biston suppressaria (Guenée,
[1858]) |
Rare |
|
31 |
Hypomecis sp. |
Rare |
|
Super family: Lasiocampoidea Family: Lasiocampidae |
||
|
32 |
Trabala ganesha Roepke, 1951 |
Rare |
|
33 |
Trabala vishnou Lefebvre, 1827 |
Rare |
|
Super family: Pyraloidea Family: Pyralidae |
||
|
34 |
Cadra cautella (Walker, 1863) |
Rare |
|
Super family: Bombycoidea Family: Saturniidae |
||
|
35 |
Actias selene (Hübner, [1807]) |
Rare |
|
36 |
Antheraea paphia (Linnaeus, 1758) |
Rare |
|
Super family: Bombycoidea Family: Sphingidae |
||
|
37 |
Daphnis nerii
(Linnaeus,
1758) |
Common |
|
38 |
Marumba dyras (Walker, 1856) |
Common |
|
39 |
Nephele hespera (Fabricius, 1775) |
Common |
|
40 |
Psilogramma sp. |
Common |
|
41 |
Theretra nessus (Drury, 1773) |
Rare |
|
Super family: Zygaenoidea Family: Limacodidae |
||
|
42 |
Parasa lepida (Cramer, 1799) |
Rare |
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