Journal of Threatened Taxa |
www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 October 2023 | 15(10): 24125–24130
ISSN 0974-7907
(Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.8702.15.10.24125–24130
#8702 | Received 23
August 2023 | Final received 12 September 2023 | Finally accepted 21 September
2023
Preliminary observations of moth
(Lepidoptera) fauna of Purna Wildlife Sanctuary,
Gujarat, India
Preeti Choudhary 1 & Indu Sharma 2
1,2 Desert Regional Centre,
Zoological Survey of India, New Pali Road, 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 October 2023 (online &
print)
Citation: Choudhary, P., & I. Sharma (2023). Preliminary observations of moth
(Lepidoptera) fauna of Purna Wildlife Sanctuary,
Gujarat, India. Journal of
Threatened Taxa
15(10): 24125–24130. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.8702.15.10.24125-24130
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. We are grateful to Dr. Sachin Gurule assistant professor & head, Dept. of Zoology,
MVP’s S.S.S.M. College, Saikheda, Nashik,
Maharashtra, and the subject editor Mr. Sanjay Sondhi,
India for guidance and support.
Abstract: Purna
Wildlife Sanctuary is located in the Sahyadri range in Dang District of Gujarat
State. A survey of the sanctuary was conducted to explore moth fauna from the
area, as no previous work is available on this group. Thus, an attempt has been
made to study the moth fauna based on collections made from April 2019 to March
2021 under the various ranges of the sanctuary. During the studies, a list of
42 species referable to 39 genera and nine families have been provided.
Keywords: Dang, moths, Gujarat, Sahyadri,
sanctuary
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 (WS) (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 of two protected areas - Purna WS and Vansda National Park
(NP). 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 WS 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 altitudinal range of 130–1,100 m. Thus, the WS has a varied range of flora
and fauna.
Moths play an important role as
indicators of the health of an ecosystem (Bachanda et
al. 2014). Most moth larvae are herbivorous and are predators of vegetables
& crops, thus playing ecological roles throughout the life cycle (Scriber
& Feeny 1979) while adults and larvae 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 (Cotes & Swinhoe 1887–1889; Hampson 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896; Bell
& Scott 1937; Chandra 2007; Chandra & Nema
2007; Smetacek 2011; Gurule
& Nikam 2011, 2013; 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),
but no information is available on the moths from the Purna
WS and therefore the present study was conducted for the first time.
Collection and identification
Survey of Purna
WS was carried out from 2019–2022. Various localities were visited, viz.:
Bardipada range, Bheskatri
range, Kalibel range, and Singhana
range of Dang & Ahwa districts of Gujarat (Table
1). For the collection, night traps for 5–6 hours were used for trapping moths
per night.
Observation and collection of
moths was done using a mercury vapor bulb of 200 W 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 out, relaxed,
pinned, and after identification up to the species level, they were labeled in
the laboratory. Their identification was done with the help of identification
keys, standard reference books, and available literature (Hampson 1894, 1895; Gurule et al. 2010, 2011; Gurule
& Nikam 2013; Gurule
2013). Further, the specimens are deposited at the National Zoological
Collection of Desert Regional Centre, Jodhpur.
Results
Four-hundred-and-seven moth
specimens were collected and further identified to 42 species under 39 genera
and nine families (Table 2, Annexure 1). 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 the
Purna WS.
Table 1. Collection of data from
various localities of the study area.
|
|
District |
Sites surveyed |
Individuals 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 |
Image numbers according to
Annexure 1 |
||
|
Superfamily: Pyraloidea Family: Crambidae |
|
||||
|
1 |
Botyodes asialis Guenée, 1854 |
Common |
1 |
||
|
2 |
Conogethes punctiferalis (Guenée,
1854) |
Rare |
|
||
|
3 |
Cydalima laticostalis (Guenée,
1854) |
Common |
|
||
|
4 |
Diaphania indica (Saunders, 1851) |
Common |
|
||
|
5 |
Parotis marginata (Hampson, 1893) |
Rare |
2 |
||
|
Superfamily: Noctuoidea Family: Erebidae |
|
||||
|
6 |
Achaea janata
(Linnaeus,
1758) |
Common |
3 |
||
|
7 |
Amata cyssea
(Stoll,
[1782]) |
Rare |
|
||
|
8 |
Anomis flava (Fabricius, 1775) |
Rare |
|
||
|
9 |
Argina astrea (Drury, 1773) |
Common |
4 |
||
|
10 |
Arna bipunctapex (Hampson, 1891) |
Rare |
5 |
||
|
11 |
Asota caricae (Fabricius, 1775) |
Common |
6 |
||
|
12 |
Asota ficus (Fabricius, 1775) |
Common |
7 |
||
|
13 |
Chalciope mygdon (Cramer, [1777]) |
Common |
8 |
||
|
14 |
Creatonotos gangis (Linnaeus, 1763) |
Common |
9 |
||
|
15 |
Eudocima phalonia (Linnaeus, 1763) |
Common |
|
||
|
16 |
Lymantria serva (Fabricius, 1793) |
Rare |
10 |
||
|
17 |
Lyncestis amphix (Cramer, [1777]) |
Rare |
11 |
||
|
18 |
Nepita conferta (Walker, 1854) |
Rare |
|
||
|
19 |
Orvasca subnotata Walker, 1865 |
Rare |
|
||
|
20 |
Perina nuda (Fabricius, 1787) |
Common |
|
||
|
21 |
Spilarctia sp. |
Rare |
12 |
||
|
22 |
Spirama helicina (Hübner, 1824) |
Common |
13 |
||
|
23 |
Sphrageidus similis (Füssli, 1775) |
Common |
14 |
||
|
24 |
Syntomoides imaon (Cramer, [1779]) |
Common |
15 |
||
|
25 |
Thyas coronata Fabricius (1775) |
Common |
16 |
||
|
26 |
Thyas honesta Hübner, [1824] |
Common |
17 |
||
|
27 |
Trigonodes disjuncta (Moore, 1882) |
Common |
18 |
||
|
28 |
Utetheisa lotrix (Cramer, [1777]) |
Common |
19 |
||
|
Family: Noctuidae |
|
||||
|
29 |
Spodoptera litura (Fabricius, 1775) |
Common |
20 |
||
|
Superfamily: Geometroidea Family: Geometridae |
|
||||
|
30 |
Biston suppressaria (Guenée,
[1858]) |
Rare |
21 |
||
|
31 |
Hypomecis sp. |
Rare |
22 |
||
|
Superfamily: Lasiocampoidea Family: Lasiocampidae |
|
||||
|
32 |
Trabala ganesha Roepke, 1951 |
Rare |
23 |
||
|
33 |
Trabala vishnou (Lefebvre, 1827) |
Rare |
24 |
||
|
Superfamily: Pyraloidea Family: Pyralidae |
|
||||
|
34 |
Cadra cautella (Walker, 1863) |
Rare |
25 |
||
|
Superfamily: Bombycoidea Family: Saturniidae |
|
||||
|
35 |
Actias selene (Hübner, [1807]) |
Rare |
26 |
||
|
36 |
Antheraea paphia (Linnaeus, 1758) |
Rare |
27 |
||
|
Superfamily: Bombycoidea Family: Sphingidae |
|
||||
|
37 |
Daphnis nerii
(Linnaeus,
1758) |
Common |
28 |
||
|
38 |
Marumba dyras (Walker, 1856) |
Common |
29 |
||
|
39 |
Nephele hespera (Fabricius, 1775) |
Common |
30 |
||
|
40 |
Psilogramma sp. |
Common |
31 |
||
|
41 |
Theretra nessus (Drury, 1773) |
Rare |
32 |
||
|
Superfamily: Zygaenoidea Family: Limacodidae |
|
||||
|
42 |
Parasa lepida (Cramer, 1799) |
Rare |
|
||
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