Insect Pollinators of Crops and Fruits in Arunachal Pradesh, Eastern Himalaya: Rich Diversity in Flowers with Yellow Anther

Abstract

A study on the insect pollinators of the commercial crops and fruits in Arunachal Pradesh, Eastern Himalaya was conducted from June, 2015 to May, 2016. For this, monitoring and sampling of insect pollinators in the important crops and fruits cultivated in the selected regions were done from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. for 9 days covering 9 spots in each crop and fruit during peak blooming period. In each spot, 10 replications of 100 m2 were considered as sample size. During the study, 57 species of insects belonging to the order Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, Diptera and Coleoptera were documented in 11 crop species and 7 fruit species. The number of species recorded from the order Diptera, Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera and Coleoptera was 23, 18, 15 and 1 respectively. While analysing the floral color discrimination, the highest species richness of insect pollinators was recorded in flowers with yellow anther color. This result coincided with Brassica juncea, as both Simpson and Shannon index showed the highest species richness in B. juncea with 19 species of insect pollinators belonging 3 orders. From the results, it is evident that, in eastern Himalayan region these native insect pollinators play significant role for yielding good quality sustainable organic crops and fruits. Further, this study leads to hypothesize that the reward patterns of flowers are ‘advertised’ in the color of the anthers to control indirectly the gamete export mediated by insect pollinators.