Vol. 19 No. 10 (2004): October
Note

Macromorphology of the tongue of Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus)

Published 2004-10-21

Abstract

Bondla Wildlife  Sanctuary is a very popular wilderness destination for the tourists visting Goa.  One of smallest wildlife protected are in the state, its flora comprises of a mixture of evergreen and moist deciduous forests, besides some riparian patches.  The tourist zone of the sanctuary has artificial landscape in form of animal enclosures, a formal garden and orchards.  Against the backdrop of increasing interest in eco-tourism, it was envisaged to compile a species inventory of butterflies of this region, an dfind out the best seasons for buttefly sightings. The investigation on species diversity and abudance was carried out in three distinct habitat types, within the sactuary viz. forests, orchards and formal gardens.  Habitat assciations aof 91 buttefly species were determined by analyzing weekly sighting records  from the three habitat types.  The recorded species belonged to 66 genera, 14 subfamilies and five families.  Nymphalidae dominated the list with 40 species, followed by Lycaenidae (19 species), Papilionidae (14 species), Pieridae (12 species), and Hesperiidae (6 species). Of the total butterfly species listed in this sanctuary, 71 species are habitat generalists and 20 species are habitat specialists, 13 figure in the scheduled categories of the Widlife (Protection) Act, and eight are endemics.  Based on the analysis of weekly data, flight periods and seasonality of species have been worked out.  The findings have been based on one year of field work. Species have been classified based on their relative estimates of abundance.  Such studies on monitoring the species diversity and abundance of butterflies can given valuable information on their population dynamics.