Abstract
A study was conducted at Valmiki Nagar, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India to explore its moth diversity from December 2018 to May 2021. This manuscript presents a partial checklist of moths from Valmiki Nagar. Four locations around the colony were studied to record the moth fauna. The study sites were surveyed twice a month using a mercury vapour lamp along with a white sheet, along with over 100 visits at night. Diurnal surveys were conducted bimonthly to observe larval host plants and day flying moths. A total of 135 species were recorded from the study area, belonging to nine superfamilies. The most diverse family of moths recorded was family Erebidae, with 39% of moths recorded in the study belonging to this family, followed by Crambidae (30%), Geometridae (8%), and other families constituting the rest. The moth diversity in the month of July was seen to be the highest. Along with this study, future studies on similar lines will help in documenting the moth diversity of Chennai.
Highlights
Moths are predominantly nocturnal and complement butterflies, their daytime counterparts, as important pollinators of flowers especially the night blooming ones (Anil & Parthasarathy 2017).Moths play an important role in the food chain as prey for diverse organisms such as bats, birds, insects, and reptiles (Raju & Ramana 2020)
The most recently published moth diversity study at Chennai is from the Adyar Eco-Park, where 90 species of moths (Nagarajan et al 2021) were recorded
The current study aims at documenting the species diversity of Valmiki Nagar (Chennai), thereby giving an insight into the urban moth diversity of Chennai
Summary
Moths are predominantly nocturnal and complement butterflies, their daytime counterparts, as important pollinators of flowers especially the night blooming ones (Anil & Parthasarathy 2017).Moths play an important role in the food chain as prey for diverse organisms such as bats, birds, insects, and reptiles (Raju & Ramana 2020). Moths are often considered as pests in agroecosystems due to the large-scale crop damage caused predominantly in their larval stages (Sinu et al 2013) and by some species in their adult stages, like the fruit piercing moths (Eudocima spp.). Several studies from Tamil Nadu recorded varying moth diversity, including 188 species of Noctuoidea from four families (Sivasankaran et al 2017), five species of fruit piercing moths of the genus Eudocima (Ramkumar et al 2010a) and 27 species of moths belonging to the family Sphingidae from Kanyakumari (Iyer & Kitching 2019). The most recently published moth diversity study at Chennai is from the Adyar Eco-Park, where 90 species of moths (Nagarajan et al 2021) were recorded. Another study dealt with the coast of Chennai recorded 42 species (Nagarajan et al 2022)
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