Assessment of diversity and relative abundance of insect fauna associated with Triticum aestivum from district Sialkot, Pakistan

Abstract

Biodiversity is variation of life. In agro-ecosystems, biodiversity is usually the calculation of comparative numbers and species of organisms. Insects are the largest and most diverse group of organisms in the world. During present study, different wheat fields of district Sialkot were sampled for the assessment of diversity and relative abundance of insect fauna. Collection of insects was carried out by the sweep net technique. A total of 896 specimens of insect fauna belonging to 15 species and 9 families were collected. Overall, maximum species diversity was observed during the month of April followed by the month of March. Highest relative abundance of sampled fauna was recorded in March (37.05%) followed by April (34.37%) while it was least in June (5.80%). This variation is probably due to temporal fluctuations observed in different months during which sampling was carried out. Overall, Schizaphis graminum (Rondani) or aphids was the most dominant species (17.52%) followed by Coccinella septempunctata (L.) (11.83%). The highly captured predator was C. septempunctata and prey was S. graminum. Simple linear regression showed the highest association between C. septempunctata (larva) and Diuraphis noxia (Kurdjumov) (R2 = 0.945). The Shannon diversity index represented the significant results regarding Diversity (H’= 2.64), Evenness (E = 0.82) and Dominance (D = 0.08) of insect fauna sampled in 2017. The Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) showed the significant effect of rainfall and temperature on most of the sampled species. The current study would be helpful in future for the application of species-specific biological control in wheat field that will lead towards sustainability of agro-ecosystem.