Diversity of butterflies of the Shettihalli Wildlife Sanctuary, Shivamogga District, Karnataka, India

: A study was conducted on the diversity of butterflies by using the pollard walk method in the tropical dry deciduous habitats of Shettihalli Wildlife Sanctuary, Shivamogga District, Karnataka, from February 2010 to January 2011. A total of 151 species of butterflies belonging to 99 genera and five families was recorded. The family Nymphalidae was the most dominant with the highest number of species (52 species; 35%), followed by Lycaenidae (33 species; 22%), Hesperiidae (25 species; 17%), Pieridae (24 species; 16%), and Papilionidae (15 species: 10%). The study also revealed 24 species of butterflies which are protected under various schedules of Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and 13 species as being endemic to the Western Ghats, peninsular India and Sri Lanka.


PLATINUM OPEN ACCESS
The Western Ghats is a prominent globally recognized biodiversity hotspot (Myers et al. 2000;Gunawardene et al. 2007), which covers about 60% of the forest area of Karnataka and one among the 36 biodiversity hotspots of the World.

Study area
The Shettihalli Wildlife Sanctuary (SWS) located between 13.8873 0 N and 75.3879 0 E occupies an area about 395.6km 2 (Fig. 1). It is spread over parts of three taluks of Shivamogga District: Shivamogga, Hosanagara, and Thirthahalli. The terrain in the sanctuary is plain 14350 to undulating with a few pockets consisting of very steep terrains and hillocks. The temperature within the sanctuary varies from 15˚C to 39˚C and the average rainfall varies around 2000mm dominated by the southwest monsoon during July to September. It covers dry deciduous, moist deciduous and semi evergreen forests of the Western Ghats. The sanctuary is rich in both floral and faunal diversity.

Sampling method
Butterfly survey was carried out from February 2010 to January 2011 to record their status and abundance. The line transect method developed by the Institution of Terrestrial Ecology (Pollard 1979) was followed to monitor the diversity. Butterflies were recorded by direct visual observation along the three fixed transect routs, each of 2km long and 10m wide, passing through the different landscape elements like dry deciduous, semi evergreen and scrub forest and walked at a constant pace for approximately one to one and half an hour. The data collection carried out in a bi-weekly random survey in the whole study period. Observations were made between 07.30hr to 11.00hr, when butterflies are most active. Butterflies were identified by using various field guides (Kunte 2000; Sharma & Radhakrishna 2005; Kasambe 2018) and the nomenclature followed is as per Kasambe (2018). Butterflies observed in this study were categorized into five categories on the basis of their abundance under different score classes such as: very common (VC) 80-100%, common (C) 60-80%, occasional (O) 40-60%, rare (R) 20-40% and very rare (VR) below 20% (Aneesh et al. 2013).

Results and Discussion
The study revealed the presence of 151 species of butterflies, belonging to five families. The checklists of all the species observed with their status are given in Table 1. Family-wise distribution of butterflies species showed that, Nymphalidae was the most dominant with 52 species (35% of total species), followed by Lycaenidae with 33 species (22%), Hesperiidae with 25 species (17%), Pieridae with 24 species (16%), and Papilionidae with 15 species (10%). On the basis of the frequency of occurrence of each butterfly species' abundance, we calculated that 68 (46%) species were common followed by 35 (23%) rare, 30 (20%) very common, 13 (9%) occasional, and 3 (2%) very rare species (Fig. 2).
Thirteen taxa listed in SWS were found to be endemic species of which six species are endemic to the Western Ghats,

Very rare
Butterflies are sensitive to changes in the habitat and climate, which influence their distribution and abundance (Wynter-Blyth 1957). The study area hosts 24 scheduled butterfly species: seven species under Schedule I Part IV, 13 species under Schedule II, and four species under Schedule IV of the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 (Arora 2003;Gupta & Mondal 2005) (Table 1).
The present study reports for the first time preliminary information on the butterfly species diversity of Shettihalli Wildlife Sanctuary, which can be used in monitoring ecosystem health, stability and functioning of the study area (Mandal 2016). Occurrence of the schedule and endemic species in the study area indicates that SWS is home to a rich diversity of butterflies. www.threatenedtaxa.org The Journal of Threatened Taxa (JoTT) is dedicated to building evidence for conservation globally by publishing peer-reviewed articles online every month at a reasonably rapid rate at www.threatenedtaxa.org. All articles published in JoTT are registered under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License unless otherwise mentioned. JoTT allows allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and distribution of articles in any medium by providing adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of publication.