Diversity of butterflies in an arboretum of Vadodara, Gujarat, India

Urjit Bhatt; P. Nagar

doi:10.15560/13.2.2073

Check List 13(2): e19675, doi: 10.15560/13.2.2073

Diversity of butterflies in an arboretum of Vadodara, Gujarat, India

Urjit M. Bhatt^‡, P. S. Nagar^§

‡ Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, India§ The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara, India

Corresponding author: Urjit Bhatt ( bhatturjit@yahoo.com )

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Bhatt U, Nagar P (2017) Diversity of butterflies in an arboretum of Vadodara, Gujarat, India. Check List 13(2): 2073. https://doi.org/10.15560/13.2.2073

Abstract

Potent pollinators and ecological indicators, butterflies are important for estimating the general health of an ecosystem. Owing to the rich plant diversity (927 species), an arboretum in Vadodara, state of Gujarat, India was selected for surveying butterfly diversity. Our survey was conducted in all seasons for an entire year from October 2012 to October 2013 and revealed 61 species. Recorded were six species of Papilionidae, three species of Hesperiidae, 20 species of Nymphalidae, 13 species of Pieridae, and 19 species of Lycaenidae. Junonia dominated with five species, followed by Eurema (three species), Graphium (three species), and Chilades (three species). Our study gives a comprehensive insight into the species diversity and richness of butterflies in Vadodara and highlights the need to conserve rare and threatened butterfly species there.

Keywords

biodiversity; Lepidoptera; Wildlife Protection Act