Diversity of Butterfly Fauna in Potohar Plateau, Pakistan
Diversity of Butterfly Fauna in Potohar Plateau, Pakistan
Waheed Iqbal* and Muhammad Faheem Malik
ABSTRACT
An investigation was carried out to study the diversity of butterfly fauna at the 53 selected locales of Potohar Plateau, Pakistan during July 2017 to September, 2019. During this study, 32 species of butterflies were identified out of 1117 specimens that belong to 22 genera, 11 subfamilies and four families. Pieridae was the dominant family contributing 70.64% (n=789) individuals followed by Nymphalidae family 26.14% (n=292) and Papilionidae and Lycaenidae family with 1.61% (n=18) individuals respectively being the least. Nymphalidae was the dominant family with 50% (n=11) genera, followed by Pieridae with 31.82% (n=7) genera, Lycaenidae with 13.63% (n=3) genera and Papilionidae with 4.55% (n=1) genera. Whereas, in case of species composition, Nymphalidae was the most dominant family with 43.75% (n=14) species followed by family Pieridae 40.62% (n=13) species, family Lycaenidae 9.37% (n=3) species and family Papilionidae with 6.25% (n=2) species. Catopsilia pyranthae was the most abundant species with 18.89% (n=211) individuals followed by Danaus chrysippus with 14.5% (n=162) and Catopsilia pomona with 12.26% (n=137) individuals. The abundance of butterflies fluctuated over the months and April, 2019, was the most active month (n=123) and the butterflies were in least proportion (n=6) in July, 2019. As a whole, Shannon-Wiener diversity index (H) was found 2.585 in Potohar Plateau. Maximum Shannon-Wiener diversity index (H) was found in Islamabad, capital territory, with 2.657 H value while it was lowest in district Attock with 2.327 H value and moderate in district Jhelum, district Chakwal and district Rawalpindi with 2.581 H, 2.42 H and 2.415 H respectively. This study shows that butterfly species are threatened due to the introduction of invasive species, new to this area and increased predator population. The species richness, evenness and abundance were found to be normal in the study area.
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