Relative abundance of insect fauna in agroforest ecosystem of Kowdipally village, Medak district

Introduction

Rice is one of the world's most important food grain crop, it is also staple food of most of the Asian countries. The crop is been attacked by many insect pests from nursery stage to final harvest, Major insect pest includes yellow stem borer, Scripophaga incertulas (Walker), leaf folder, Cnaphalocrocis medinalis (Guenee), white backed planthopper, Sogatella furcifera (Horvath), brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens (Stal.), gundhi bug, Leptocorisa acuta (Thunberg) and others. Among these, yellow stem borer and leaf folder are the most notorious pests causing significant losses (Saini et al, 2015) [12] . Limited research exists on arthropod diversity in agroforestry systems within Telangana. This study aims to establish baseline data and generate a preliminary checklist to support future research and sustainable agricultural practices. So, a comprehensive investigation was performed to study the relative abundance of different insect families of various insect orders in the paddy with teak agroforest ecosystem during Kharif 2024 in the Kowdipally village.

Materials and Methods

The current investigation was carried out in Kanchanpally village of Kowdipally Mandal of Medak Dist located at Latitude 17.904944° N, Longitude 78.253132° E during Kharif 2024 from July-November. Different insect trapping methods were used for collection of insects including active sampling methods (visual observation, sweep net) and passive methods viz., sticky traps, pitfall traps, pheromone trap for estimation of YSB abundance. All the insects were collected and sorted out into various families of different orders. All the data was analysed using MS Excel 2007 for calculating the relative abundance.

Relative abundance: Generally expressed as a percentage, is a method for estimation of abundance of each taxon among the current taxa collected in a habitat. Using the following formula, the relative abundance of various insect orders and families was calculated.

Relative abundance (%) = ni X 100/N Where, N: the total number of individuals of all species ni: the number of individuals of species.

Following the collection of all insect individuals, they were divided into several families within their respective orders. The relative abundance of each order was then determined in relation to the total number of individuals taken from all orders, and similarly for families in which more than two families were reported.

Results and Discussion

Of all the orders reported in the agroforest ecosystem, relative abundance of order Lepidoptera was found to highest with 17.94% followed by Hemiptera (RA = 17.05%), Hymenoptera (RA = 14.32%), Orthoptera (RA = 14.06%), Odonata (RA = 10.97%), Coleoptera (RA = 9.39%), Araneae (RA = 9.34%), Diptera (RA = 4.35%), Mantodea (RA = 1.42%), Neuroptera (RA = 1.00%) and lowest was reported from order Blattodea (RA = 0.16%) (Fig 1). Akhilandeshwari et al. (2022) [1] reported Hemiptera as the most abundant insect order which validated with the present study where Hemiptera with 17.05% Relative abundance as one of the orders reported in the ecosystem. In the current study Lepidoptera reported with RA = 16.91% which was in line with Pasham Sravani et al (2026) [10] who studied relative abundance of insects in Narsapur location. In the order Orthoptera, Acrididae (RA = 40.67%) recorded highest relative abundance in agroforest ecosystem followed by Tettigoniidae (RA = 29.10%), Pygromorphidae (RA = 19.03%), Gryllidae (RA = 7.09%) and least abundance was reported from Gryllotalpidae (RA = 4.10%) (Table 1). Acrididae and Tettigoniidae families recorded highest relative abundance with minimum difference while Gryllotalpidae recorded least abundance. The results were in line with Akhtar et al. (2012) [2] who reported Acrididae (85%) as most abundant insect order of Orthoptera.

In the order Hemiptera, Cicadellidae (RA = 48.62%) reported highest value of relative abundance followed by Miridae (RA = 17.23%), Pentatomidae (RA = 9.23%), Reduviidae (RA = 8.92%), Alydidae (RA = 8.31%), Delphacidae (RA = 7.69%) (Table 1). The current results were in accordance with Chaitanya et al. (2024) [7] who reported highest relative abundance of Cicadellidae as pest and Miridae as predator in bacillus treated rice fields. Out of four families recorded in the order Lepidoptera, in the present study, Crambidae (RA = 56.73%) reported highest relative abundance followed by Noctuidae (RA = 16.96%), Erebidae (RA = 15.20%), Nymphalidae (RA = 11.11%) (Table 1). The current findings were in contradiction with Meena et al. (2018) [9] who reported family Noctuidae as highly abundant.

In agroforest ecosystem, Dolichopodidae (RA = 45.78%) reported highest relative abundance followed by Culicidae (RA = 32.53%), Muscidae (RA = 21.69%) from the order Diptera (Table 1). Muscidae reported relatively lower abundance than other families. Attaullah et al. (2021) [5] reported Culicidae as most abundant in rice ecosystem which were in accordance with agroecosystem of Kowdipally and agroforest ecosystem of Narsapur of present study and were also in line with Ponaraman et al.

(2016) [11] who studied aquatic insects in irrigated rice fields and reported family Culicidae as most abundant. Formicidae (RA = 35.90%) was with higher relative abundance in the order Hymenoptera followed by Ichneumonidae (RA = 35.16%) with little difference, Apidae (RA = 17.95%), Vespidae (RA = 10.99%) (Table 1), relative higher percentage of abundance of families viz., Ichneumonidae and Apidae was seen in agroforest ecosystem which was in accordance with (Ikhsan and Hamid, 2020) [8] who recorded Formicidae and Ichneumonidae as most abundant families of Hymenoptera. The sequence of Coleopteran families reported in decreasing order were as below: Coccinellidae (RA = 39.11%) > Hydrophilidae (RA = 17.88%) > Carabidae (RA = 14.53%) = Scarabidae (RA = 14.53%) > Staphylinidae (RA = 13.97%) (Table 1). In this study area, Coccinellidae were with higher percentage of relative abundance while other families were with slight difference in abundance which was in line with Anitha et al. (2020) [4] who studied diversity of coccinellids in Kharif rice. Similar findings were noticed with Bhede et al. (2023) [6] who reported coccinellids (32.92%) as the most abundant predators followed by spiders (30.66%) in cotton.

In the Araneae, Lycosidae (RA = 34.27%) was reported to be relatively in higher abundance followed by Tetragnathidae (RA = 25.84%), Sparassidae (RA = 20.79%) while least abundance was in the family Oxyopidae (RA = 19.10%) (

Conclusion

The relative abundance of insect order was differing from each other might be due to the diverse food sources, complex vertical habitats, and stable microclimates provided by the the agroforest ecosystem. Plant hoppers (Brown plant hopper and leafhoppers (green leafhopper) were found to be distributed most widely in paddy fields, also leaf folder population seen higher during Kharif 2024 in the study location along with yellow stem borer population, that caused highest abundance of lepidopteran order. The present study shows the baseline relative abundance of insect individuals of different families which will help in survey and surveillance of rice arthropods in agroforest ecosystem with regard to change in climatic condition.

Disclaimer (Artificial intelligence)

Author(s) hereby declares that text-to-image generators and no generative AI technologies such as Large Language Models (Chat GPT, COPILOT, etc) have been used by them during writing or editing the present manuscript.

Acknowledgement

AcknowledgementsThe Author(s) express their sincere gratitude to Head of the Department, College of Agriculture, Rajendranagar, PJTAU, Hyderabad as well as to the Scientists, Professors and farmers who gave their constant support and guidance in conducting the experiment.

References

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