Biodiversity and population dynamics of butterflies lepidoptera insecta in chosen ecosystems of thoothukudi district tamilnadu

Abstract

Insects including the species rich lepidoptera play a central role in all terrestrial ecosystems they have relatively the largest number of species in the animal kingdom and constitute the majority of all described species in the biosphere their short generation times produce rapid population responses to a wide range of biotic and abiotic environment making them vitally important for ecological study lewis et al 1998 currently the global insect species richness is estimated to be about ten million stork 1993 a re evaluation of erwin s estimate of tropical arthropod species richness arrives at a total of 4 8 million gaston 1991 odegaard 2000 novotny et al 2002 of course nobody knows how many insect species are there in the universe this group consequently has the ability to illuminate patterns and processes of biological diversity which may be of benefit to conservation efforts devries et al 1999a b newline newline newline