Coccinellid beetles diversity in agro-climatic zones of Bhubaneswarn tomato

Abstract

The current research was conducted to study the abundance and diversity of various species of coccinellid beetles around the agro-climatic zone of Bhubaneswar. It revealed the presence of 10 different species of lady bird beetles viz. E. vigintioctopunctata, B. suturalis, C. transversalis, C. undecimpunctata, C. septempunctata, C. sexmaculata, H. maindroni, A. cardoni, S. coccivora and P. dissecta. All total of 1363 numbers of beetles have been collected (few visually counted) from different vegetation including vegetables, crop field, fruit orchards, etc. The abundance of P. dissecta species was highest (344) contributing about 25.24% of the total population, followed by C. septempunctata (230, 16.87%), and C. transversalis (226, 16.58%). But in terms of species diversity, C. transversalis was the most diversified species among all followed by P. dissecta and E. vigintioctopunctata. The collected species of coccinellid were classified into three groups as per their sub-family viz. Epilachninae, Chilocorinae and Coccinellinae. Among them the coccinellinae sub-family included highest numbers of species (6) with maximum abundance in the area having 701 beetles contributing about 51.42% of all coccinellids collected.