Ecological studies of insect communities in Anaikatty hills

Abstract

Community studies are relatively less in ecological entomology. Documentation of the communities of insects itself is a challenging job because of the inherent weakness in taxonomical brevity at the special level. The present study aimed primarily at exploring the patterns of insect diversity of a dry deciduous forest of Anaikatty hills, Western Ghats. As the term insect holds a large spectrum of organisms with a great level of taxonomic ambiguity, new approaches are needed to face the problems related with its diversity and distribution. The new approach attempted in this study was to examine the dynamics of diversity and abundance at different levels. At the broadest level an attempt has been made to study the composition and changes of insect families within and between different microhabitats of the landscape. At the intermediate level, the species composition, diversity and dynamics of one selected group of insects, viz., butterflies and at a finer level the aggregation and dynamics of the individuals of the selected species of butterflies were studied. The abiotic and biotic influences of these family levels, species level and individual level patterns were also studied