Check List of Species Richness and Abundance of Orthoptera Fauna in Bharathi Park, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

Order Orthoptera is one of the largest and most important invertebrate groups for environmental monitoring and assessment. Orthoptera faunal composition was carried out at Bharathi Park, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India to evaluate the present status of various species. PAST software was used to perform various statistical analyses to estimate the Orthoptera composition. Overall, 334 individuals belonging to 22 species, 19 genera, 17 tribes under 10 subfamilies, and four families of Orthoptera were recorded. Species richness (59.09%) and species abundance (70.06%) were recorded highest in the Acrididae family followed by Pyrgomorphidae, Tettigoniidae, and Gryllidae. Oedipodinae was the most species-rich (27.27%) and the most abundant subfamily, accounting for 30.24% of the total collected individuals. During the study period, 10 dominant, five intermediate dominance, four incidental, and three rare species were observed. Among these, Spathosternum prasiniferum was found to be the most dominant species (D=18.26) and the least dominant (D = 0.6) species was Euconocephalus pallidus. Based on the principal component analysis, the distribution of species along with the first two PCs (PC1= 33.87% and PC2=28.68%) accounted for the highest variance of the total variances. Cluster analysis showed that Acrotylus humbertianus and Teleogryllus mitratus, Conocephalus maculates and Gryllus bimaculatus Orthopterans were similar to each other. The value of the Shannon diversity index (2.27), Simpson index (0.87), Margalef index (2.2), and α-diversity (5.75) were higher in Acrididae when compared with other families. Value of Evenness (0.93) was highest in Gryllidae. Statistical analysis infers that the richness and abundance percentage of Orthopterans significantly varied between species to species and family to family.