Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 January 2025 | 17(1): 26421–26425

 

ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) 

https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.9114.17.1.26421-26425

#9114 | Received 22 April 2024 | Final received 16 November 2024 | Finally accepted 12 January 2025

 

 

Survey of Orthoptera in the Desert National Park, Rajasthan, India

 

Anshuman Pati 1, Indranil Paul 2  & Sutirtha Dutta 3

 

1,2,3 Wildlife Institute of India, Post Box #18, Chandrabani, Dehradun, Uttarakhand 248001, India.

1,3 Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh 201002, India.

1 anshumanpati1996@gmail.com (corresponding author), 2 29indranil@gmail.com, 3 sutirthadutta2016@gmail.com

 

 

Editor: Anonymity requested.                Date of publication: 26 January 2025 (online & print)

 

Citation: Pati, A., I. Paul & S. Dutta (2025). Survey of Orthoptera in the Desert National Park, Rajasthan, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 17(1): 26421–26425. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.9114.17.1.26421-26425

  

Copyright: © Pati et al. 2025. 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: National Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA), Government of India,  and Theodore J. Cohn Research Fund for research award.

 

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

 

Acknowledgements: We are thankful to the director, Wildlife Institute of India; dean (FWS); registrar and office staff of the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun for administrative support. The study was part of the Bustard Recovery Programme of the Wildlife Institute of India, funded by the National Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA), Government of India. AP is thankful to the Theodore J. Cohn Research Fund for research award. Special thanks to the Bustard Recovery Project team for their guidance, encouragement and support during fieldwork. The authors are thankful to Mr. Devendar Genwa and Mr. Prakash Parihar for their assistance during the fieldwork. Special thanks to the Rajasthan Forest Department for providing the necessary work permission in the Desert National Park. A special thanks to Dr. R. Swaminathan, Retired Professor of Entomology & Emeritus Scientist (ICAR) and Mrs. Tatiana Swaminathan, Honorary Museum Curator, Department of Entomology, Rajasthan College of Agriculture, Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture & Technology, Udaipur for their guidance in the specimen identification.

 

 

 

Abstract: Members of the insect order Orthoptera comprising grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets form a dominant and vital group of invertebrates in the arid environment. Orthopterans play an important role in grassland ecosystems and their species diversity and abundance in grasslands are much higher compared to those in the agricultural and scrubland areas. We attempt to create a comprehensive list of Orthopteran species from the Desert National Park (DNP) and its surrounding areas from the Thar Desert landscape of Rajasthan. This area constitutes one of the largest and few protected areas of arid biodiversity in India. In different enclosures of DNP sweep net sampling was done to sample the focal species in different seasons. 24 orthoptera species belonging to 20 genera and 11 subfamilies under 5 families were recorded.

 

Keywords: Grasshopper, grassland, habitat, insect, season, sweep net, Thar Desert.

 

 

Deserts are found on almost all the continents of the world and are characterized by dunes and interdunal valleys. These regions experience extremely hot summers, cold winters, and low, erratic rainfall. In India, the central parts of the desert are occupied by grasslands. Grassland ecosystems are severely threatened by agriculture and industrialization (White et al. 2000). Despite providing an assortment of ecosystem services, supporting human livelihoods, and harbouring endemic wildlife, grasslands in India have been largely ignored in development and conservation discourses (Dutta et al. 2010). In grasslands, insect diversity is usually linked to plant species composition and habitat structure (Roffey & Popov 1968).

Orthopteran insects, especially grasshoppers, have a substantial importance in the ecology of grassland ecosystems, being important primary herbivores and significantly contributing to the diet of the Great Indian Bustard, an endangered bird of Thar Desert (Dutta & Jhala 2021). Grasshoppers regularly indicate habitat quality and change, so they are commonly regarded as potential ecological indicator species for grasslands (Bazelet & Samways 2011).

The order Orthoptera is one of the significant insect orders, with about 29,530 species recorded worldwide (Cigliano et al. 2024). There are about 1,274 species or subspecies belonging to 442 genera and 23 families recorded from India (Chand et al. 2024). Some species of grasshoppers and locusts cause considerable loss to vegetation in agricultural ecosystems in particular, in many parts of the world due to their massive seasonal outbreaks (Klein et al. 2021).

In Thar Desert, the Desert National Park (DNP) is an important grassland ecosystem with vast expanses of grassland intermixed with shrubs and small trees. Earlier Rathore (2004) reported only 10 species of Orthoptera from DNP. There is paucity of information about the orthopteran species in the Thar landscape, specially the DNP, being the only prominent protected area representative of India’s north-western arid biogeographic zone. Therefore, the aim of our study was to understand how many different type of orthopteran species are there.

 

Methods

The Thar Desert occupies nearly 385,000 km2 and about 9% of the area of India (Islam & Rahmani 2004). Thar is occupied mainly by dry open grassland or grassland interspersed with trees and shrubs with broad topographic features like gravels, plains, sand-soil mix, dunes, and rocky hillocks (Sharma & Mehra2009). The Desert National Park (DNP); actually a Wildlife Sanctuary encompasses about 3,162 km2 in the Jaisalmer District and another 1,262 km2 in the Barmer Districts of Rajasthan. Several areas within the national park are protected by fencing where the human activity is restricted to conserve the habitat for important wildlife species like the Great Indian Bustard, where the vegetation is natural. Within the DNP several areas outside the enclosures experience unrestricted human interference and movements, where the vegetation of the few areas is natural and few areas are cultivated. The study was carried out in different enclosures and unprotected agro-pastoral areas of DNP (Image 1). The size of the enclosures are different, wherein, the minimum size of the survey enclosures are 3 km2 and the maximum is 12 km2. We surveyed these enclosures and adjoining unprotected areas in summer, monsoon and winter seasons from June 2021 to December 2023. We visited the sampling area multiple times in three monsoon, two winter and two summer seasons.

Sampling was done at random points generated inside the study area. Sweep netting (Rudd & Jensen 1977) was done in a 50 x 4 m2 belt transect, following a standard approach of about 100 strokes and the samples were collected in a container after every 20 strokes. After that four adult individuals of different sexes of each species were collected from the sample container. Preservation of the collected specimen was done using wet and dry methods. For the dry preservation insects were pinned and kept in a storage box and (Image 2) for the wet preservation 70% ethanol were used. All the preserved insects were studied under Nikon stereozoom microscope and identified using taxonomic keys by Uvarov (1977). In addition, we also used the species identification information from the Orthoptera Species File (http://Orthoptera.SpeciesFile.org) last accessed on April 2024. The collected specimens are deposited in the Great Indian Bustard Conservation Breeding Center (Wildlife Institute of India), Pokhran, Rajasthan, India.

 

Results and Discussion

A total of 24 species of Orthoptera were recorded from different enclosures (Protected) and unprotected agro-pastoral areas. These species belong to five families, 11 subfamilies, represent 20 genera, and four subgenera (Table 1). Notably 12 species were recorded in summer (April & May) while 24 species were observed during monsoon (July & August) and eight species in winter (November & December). These species belong to four major types of habitats, viz., grassland, scrubland, agricultural land, and barren land (Image 3).

The DNP is mainly covered by grassland, and the dominant grass species include Dactyloctenium aegyptium, Dactyloctenium scindicum, Aristida depressa, Cenchrus biflorus, Lasiurus sindicus; apart from these, a few shrub species are present comprising Aerva pseudotomentosa, Crotalaria burhia, Dipterygium glaucum, and Fagonia cretica (Charan & Sharma 2016). During the monsoon all the 24 species of Orthoptera were found which can be attributed to the availability of green vegetation compared to other seasons when the vegetation becomes predominantly dry. Acrididae was the most abundant family recorded during the study followed by Pyrgomorphidae, Tettigoniidae, Schizodactylidae, and Tetrigidae. The present study adds to the existing knowledge of the orthopteran fauna of DNP.

                        

Table 1. Orthoptera from Desert National Park during 2021–2023.

Family

Subfamily

Genera

Subgenus

Species

Habitat

Acrididae

Acridinae

Truxalis

 

Truxalis indica (Bolívar, 1902)

Grassland, Scrubland

Calliptaminae

Acorypha

 

Acorypha glaucopsis (Walker, 1870)

Grassland

Cyrtacanthacridinae

Schistocerca

 

Schistocerca gregaria (Forskål, 1775)

Agriculture land, Grassland

Anacridium

 

Anacridium rubrispinum Bey-Bienko, 1948

Grassland, Scrubland

Eyprepocnemidinae

Heteracris

 

Heteracris littoralis (Rambur, 1838)

Scrubland

Gomphocerinae

Crucinotacris

 

Crucinotacris decisa (Walker, 1871)

Grassland

Leva

 

Leva indica (Bolívar, 1902)

Grassland

Ochrilidia

 

Ochrilidia geniculata (Bolívar, 1913)

Grassland

 

Ochrilidia gracilis (Krauss, 1902)

Grassland

 

Ochrilidia hebetata (Uvarov, 1926)

Grassland

Oedopodinae

Acrotylus

 

Acrotylus humbertianus Saussure, 1884

Grassland

 

Acrotylus longipes (Charpentier, 1845)

Scrubland, Grassland, Agriculture land

Oedaleus

 

Oedaleus senegalensis (Krauss, 1877)

Scrubland, Grassland

Scintharista

 

Scintharista notabilis (Walker, 1870)

Barren land

Sphingonotus

Neosphingonotus

Sphingonotus (Neosphingonotus) paradoxus Bey-Bienko, 1948

Barren land

Sphingonotus

Sphingonotus (Sphingonotus) rubescens (Walker, 1870)

Barren land

Catantopinae

Diabolocatantops

 

Diabolocatantops pinguis (Stål, 1861)

Scrubland

Pyrgomorphidae

Pyrgomorphinae

Chrotogonus

Chrotogonus

Chrotogonus (Chrotogonus) trachypterus (Blanchard, 1836)

Barren land

Poekilocerus

 

Poekilocerus pictus (Fabricius, 1775)

Scrubland

Pyrgomorpha

Pyrgomorpha

Pyrgomorpha (Pyrgomorpha) bispinosa Walker, 1870

Agriculture land

Pyrgomorpha (Pyrgomorpha) conica (Olivier, 1791)

Agriculture land

Tenuitarsus

 

Tenuitarsus orientalis Kevan, 1959

Barren land

Tetrigidae

Tetriginae

Paratettix Bolívar, 1887

 

Paratettix sp.

Grassland

Schizodactylidae

Schizodactylinae

Schizodactylus

 

Schizodactylus monstrosus (Drury, 1773)

Barren land

Tettigoniidae

Conocephalinae

Euconocephalus

 

Euconocephalus incertus (Walker, 1869)

Grassland

 

 

For images - - click here for full PDF

 

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