Wednesday, November 17, 2004
D0509

Biodiversity of Coleopterous insects in agro-forest area of Faisalabad

Muhammad Kashif Zahoor, kashif_uaf@hotmail.com and Anjum Suhail, dranjumsuhail@hotmail.com. University of Agriculture, Entomology, Insect Biodiversity & Biosystematic Lab, Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan

Coleopterous insects present remarkable species diversity and striking morphological and biological variation. The collected beetle specimens from agro-forest area of Faisalabad were identified and estimation of species richness, species evenness and species diversity were made by Shannon diversity Index. Two types of habitats were selected for the biodiversity study: crop area and forest area. The data was obtained during May-Oct. 2002 through netting, hand picking, pitfall traps and light traps. Both adults and immature coleopterous insects belonging to 28-families were collected in the entire agro-forest area with the dominance of scarabaeidae, carabaeidae and coccinellidae. When diversity of both the areas was compared, it was concluded that the forest area was more diverse than crop area. The meteorological data were also collected during the entire collection period. It was also noted that during the months of July and August, when the humidity was high, population of beetles was high as compared to other months.


Keywords: Biodiversity, Coleoptera