Insect drift over the northern Arabian sea in early summer |
S C Pathak†, Vandana Kulshrestha, Arun Kumar Choubey§ and A H Parulekar*
Department of PG Studies and Research in Biological Sciences, Rani
Durgavati University, Jabalpur 482 001, India
*Biological Oceanography Division, National Institute of Oceanography, Dona Paula, Goa
403 004, India
†
Corresponding author.Air borne insects, mostly carried by wind currents, were trapped over the northern Arabian sea (16º to 20º N; 68º to 72º E), in the course of cruise No. 111, ORV SAGAR KANYA (March 14 to April 7, 1996). A total of 2,301 insects belonging to 8 different orders, 47 families and 173 species were trapped. Of these, Hymenoptera was represented by the largest number (1082), which was followed by Hemiptera (586), Diptera (552), Coleoptera (51), Neuroptera (10), Trichoptera (03), Lepidoptera (03) and Orthoptera (01). The trapped insects were mostly between 0·6 mm to over 11 mm long. The data was examined for a -diversity as well as for possible correlations between various parameters like the diversity index, size and number of insects trapped on one hand and the distance of the nearest land mass in wind direction, on the other.