Journal of Threatened Taxa |
www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 September 2021 | 13(11): 19611–19615
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893
(Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.5427.13.11.19611-19615
#5427 | Received 25 September 2019 | Final
received 13 July 2021 | Finally accepted 03 September 2021
A preliminary assessment of odonate diversity along the river Tirthan,
Great Himalayan National Park Conservation Area, India with reference to the
impact of climate change
Amar Paul Singh 1, Kritish De 2, Virendra Prasad Uniyal 3 & Sambandam
Sathyakumar 4
1–4 Wildlife Institute of India, Post
Box #18, Chandrabani, Dehradun Uttarakhand 248001,
India.
2 Department of Bio Sciences, Sri
Sathya Sai University for Human Excellence, Gulbarga, Karnataka 585313, India.
1 amarpaulsingh4@gmail.com
(corresponding author), 2 kritish.de@gmail.com, 3 uniyalvp@wii.gov.in,
4 ssk@wii.gov.in
Editor: Albert G. Orr, Griffith
University, Nathan, Australia. Date of publication:
26 Septtember 2021 (online & print)
Citation: Singh, A.P., K. De, V.P. Uniyal & S. Sathyakumar (2021). A preliminary assessment of odonate diversity along the river Tirthan,
Great Himalayan National Park Conservation Area, India with reference to the
impact of climate change. Journal of Threatened Taxa 13(11): 19611–19615. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.5427.13.11.19611-19615
Copyright: © Singh et al. 2021. 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: The study
was carried out with the financial support given to Wildlife Institute of India from
Department of Science
and Technology under
National mission for Sustaining
the Himalayan Ecosystem
(DST-NMSHE) (DST Grant Number: DST/SPLICE/CCP/NMSHE/TF-2/WII/2014[G]).
Competing interests: The authors
declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: Authors are thankful to Director
and Dean, Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun for providing necessary
facilities to carry out the work. Authors are also thankful of Mr. Nikhil Singh
Kahera for his help during the field work.
Abstract: A total of 19 species of odonates, including eight species of Anisoptera
(dragonflies) and 11 species of Zygoptera
(damselflies), were recorded along the Tirthan River,
Great Himalayan National Park Conservation Area (GHNPCA), Himachal Pradesh.
Among these species, 17 were reported from the area for the first time. With
the addition of these new records the number of odonates
known from the GHNPCA is increased to 23 species representing 18 genera and
eight families. Indothemis carnatica, Agriocnemis femina, and Argiocnemis
rubescens are reported for the first time from
the western Himalayan region. The study found a significant change in the
species composition of odonates over a period of 18
years in the area, which may be due to changes in microhabitat conditions
associated with climate change.
Keywords: Dragonfly, damselfly, GHNPCA,
Himachal Pradesh, new records, western Himalaya.
Globally,
6,256 species in 686 genera of odonates (order
Odonata) are known (Paulson & Schorr 2020) and most of them are restricted
to the tropics, especially to forests, where
the group has the greatest diversity (Kalkman
et al. 2008). The Odonata of India is represented by 488 species and 27
subspecies in 154 genera and 18 families (Kalkman et
al. 2020). The suborder Zygoptera (Damselflies)
comprise 211 species in 59 genera & nine families; Anisozygoptera
one species in one genus & one family; and Anisoptera
(Dragonflies) 276 species in 94 genera & eight families (Subramanian & Babu 2017).
The odonates
are among the most effective bioindicators of environmental health (Kutcher
& Bried 2014; Miguel et al. 2017), and can be
used to assess water quality (Kutcher & Bried
2014), changes in the habitat structure (Yang et al. 2017), success of wetland
restoration (D’Amico et al. 2004), ecological condition of streams (de
Oliveira-Junior et al. 2015), and environmental quality (Júnior et al. 2015). Odonate diversity of Himachal Pradesh has been studied by
various authors (Kumar 1982, 2000; Uniyal et al.
2000; Babu & Mehta 2009; Babu
& Nandy 2010; Babu
& Mitra 2011; Subramanian & Babu 2018). Uniyal et al. (2000)
reported six species of dragonflies from the Great Himalayan National Park.
The Great Himalayan National Park
Conservation Area (GHNPCA) is a World Heritage site designated by UNESCO,
situated in Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh and
traversed by three tributaries of river Beas—Tirthan,
Parvati, and Sainj. The Park extends from the
Himalayan foothills to the alpine zone ranging from 1,300m to 6,000m of
altitudinal gradient. The present study was carried out in order to update our
understanding of the diversity of odonates in the
GHNPCA and to assess the changes of species composition, if any, over the
period of 18 years since the previous survey (Uniyal
et al. 2000).
Materials and Methods
The work was carried out along a
length of about 28km of the river Tirthan (a
tributary of Beas River), from Nagini village (31.640
lat. 77.398 long., 1,475m to Chalocha (31.685 lat.,
77.513 long., 2,450m) monthly from June
to December, 2018. The area lies near the boundary within the GHNPCA (Figure 1)
located in the western Himalaya in the state of Himachal Pradesh. It was
declared as a national park in 1999 and a world heritage site by UNESCO in
2014. The area comes under the ‘Western Himalayan broadleaf forests’ ecoregion
(UNESCO 2020).
We surveyed odonate
diversity following the methods of Giugliano et al.
(2012). Adults were surveyed between 0930 h and 0500 h by walking slowly along
the edge of the water body three times a month; and with the help of binoculars
notes were made of all species observed. Most species were identified without
capture. When necessary, a telescopic sweep net was used to catch odonates for identification. Species were identified using
published literature (Andrew et al. 2008; Subramaniam 2009; Nair 2011) and web
resources (Joshi et al. 2019).
Results and
Discussion
A total of 19 species of odonates representing 16 genera were recorded; these
comprised eight species of dragonflies (Anisoptera)
and 11 species of damselflies (Zygoptera) (Table 1,
Image 1–19). Among the dragonflies, the family Libellulidae
was represented by six species in four genera, and the families Aeshnidae and Gomphidae by one
species each (Figure 2). Among the damselflies, the family Coenagrionidae
was represented by five species in four genera, the families Chlorocyphidae and Platycnemididae
by two species each, and the families Lestidae and Calopterygidae by only one species each (Figure 2).
Among these odonates,
one dragonfly Indothemis carnatica Fabricius, 1798 and
two damselflies, namely, Agriocnemis femina Brauer, 1868 and Argiocnemis rubescens
Selys, 1877, are reported for the first time from
Himachal Pradesh, these being the westernmost records in the Himalaya. Rank
abundance tests revealed that Libellulidae was the
dominant family in the river followed by Coenagrionidae
and Lestidae was the least dominant family (Figure
3).
Uniyal et al. (2000) reported the
presence of six species of odonates from the GHNPCA.
The present study reports another 17 species from the area which increases the
total number of odonate species from the area to 23
species in 18 genera and eight families. The present study failed to register Anax guttatus, Orthetrum japonicum, Pantala
flavescens, and Sympetrum commixtum,
which were recorded from the area by Uniyal et al.
(2000). The present work reported Indothemis
carnatica, Agriocnemis
femina, and Argiocnemis
rubescens for the first time from the western
Himalayan region, these species having previously been reported from the east
within the Himalayan region (Subramanian & Babu
2018), however, Indothemis carnatica was previously reported from Andaman
& Nicobar Island, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra
Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal (Subramanian et al. 2018; Payra
et al. 2020) and has been recently recorded from Punjab (Singh et al.
2021).
Compared with Uniyal
et al. (2000) that recorded six species, the present study was conducted more
systematically along 28 km of the Tirthan River using
standardised methods. Grassy, stagnant water, running water, and rocky habitats
were preferred by different species (Image 20 and 21). Orthetrum
triangulare and Orthetrum taeniolatum
were the most
common species found throughout the stretch from 1,475 m elevation up to 2,450
m. There was higher species richness at lower elevations. Calicnemia
eximia, Ischnura rubilio, and Agriocnemis
femina preferred grassy habitat near the banks of
stagnant ponds at a lower elevation range from 1,475–1,600 m. Anax nigrofasciatus, Crocothemis servilia, Orthetrum pruinosum, Orthetrum triangulae,
Amphiallagma parvum, Ceriagrion coromandelianum,
Ischnura forcipate, Palpopleura
sexmaculata, Libellago lineata, and Copera
vittata were found at stagnant or slow running
grassy water channels from 1,475–1,700 m. Indolestes
cyaneus was very rare in the region and was found
away from the river under forest canopy cover at an elevation of 1,495 m. Aristocypha quadrimaculata
and Indothemis carnatica
preferred rocky water channels from 1,475–2,000 m. However, Paragomphus lineatus was
found in agricultural areas near the river from 1,475–1,600 m and Neurobasis chinensis
was collected from fast running water at 1,475 m.
The Himalayan ecosystem is a sensitive and
fragile ecosystem with rich biodiversity that provides major ecosystem services
(Kumar et al. 2019). As climate change phenomena become a threat to this
ecosystem, monitoring climatic indicator species helps us understand the change
of ecosystem functions caused by climate change. Odonates
have for some time been used successfully as model organisms to study climate
change (Hassall & Thompson 2008; Parr 2010; Jaeschke
et al. 2013; Bush et al. 2014; Hassall 2015; Termaat
et al. 2019). Studies by Flenner & Sahlén (2008) has shown that species composition and
abundance may change over as short a time span as 10 years due to environmental
changes as dragonflies react rapidly to climate change. The present study found
significant changes in the odonate species
composition relative to that found by Uniyal et al.
(2000), as only two species were re-recorded with the addition of 17 new
species to the region. These changes in species composition may have occurred
because of changes in microhabitat factors due to climate changes in the
Himalayan region or due to the sampling efforts in the region.
Dragonflies have been shown to be
useful for ecosystem monitoring and conservation, and recently an increased
effort is being made to make information on dragonflies available to both
scientists and policymakers (Kalkman et al. 2008).
So, it is indispensable to document the status of diversity and ecology of odonates as well as other entomofauna from the Great
Himalayan National Park Conservation Area to understand changing ecological
conditions in the context of climate change.
For
figures & images - - click here
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