A Preliminary Record of Orthopteroid Insects of the Maldive Islands

Abstract

The Orthopteroid fauna of the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean is poor. Species known to occur in the archipelago comprise eight species of cockroaches, most, if not all, of which have been introduced by human agency; a termite; four species of bush- crickets, all widely distributed elsewhere; a mole cricket, also widely distributed; eight species of true crickets (with a possible ninth), at least two of them introduced by human agency; four widely dispersed species of grasshoppers; a groundhopper; and five species of earwigs, at least four introduced. If the list is extended to include the southernmost island of the Laccadive (Lakshadweep) Islands, Minikoi, another cockroach, a mantid, another cricket, the Bombay locust, and possibly another groundhopper may be added to the recorded species. The Chagos Archipelago to the south has one more species of cockroach, a termite and another cricket which could occur in the Maldives. Most of the non-cosmopolitan fauna seems to be of southern Indian or Sri Lankan origin, but some has African affinities by way of the Seychelles. No species endemic omly to the islands is known. Note.-Because the manuscript of this paper was mislaid after submission, only a brief abstract (Kevan, 1990b), not the entire paper, was published at the time intended. Little has been published on the insect fauna of the numerous, low-lying, coral atolls that constitute the Republic of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean to the southwest of the Indian mainland and south of the Indian Laccadive or Lakshadweep Islands. At the turn of the century there were, however, a few contributions on certain orders, by Cameron, Meyrick, Laidlaw and Burr (in Gardiner 1901-1902) on some Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, Odonata and orthopteroids, respectively. The majority of the last were, in fact, reported from Minikoi Atoll (which is now administered by India as part of the Laccadive Islands), rather than from the Maldives proper, to which it is topographically akin. Gardiner (1906) sum- marized what was known of the insect (including orthopteroid) fauna of the islands. So far as most insect orders, including orthopteroids, are concerned, additional records from the Maldive Islands are sparsely scattered through the literature and difficult to trace. In connection with Maldivian orthopteroids, a paper by Burr (1910) and two by Bolivar (1912, 1924) should be mentioned as they deal in part with the isolated Chagos Archipelago (or Oil Islands), lying directly to the south of the Maldive Islands and thus to be expected to have some faunal connections with them. Collections of orthopteroid insects have been made in the