A preliminary study on butterflies of the Kathlaur-Kaushlian Wildlife Sanctuary, Pathankot, Punjab, India

in the past with the works of de Nicéville (1886, 1890), Moore (1890-1905), Marshall & de Nicéville (1883), Swinhoe (1893, 1896, 1905–1913), Bingham (1905, 1907), Evans (1932), Talbot (1939, 1947), WynterBlyth (1957), and Kehimkar (2008) being some of the more significant publications. To date, 1641 species of A preliminary study on butterflies of the Kathlaur-Kaushlian Wildlife Sanctuary, Pathankot, Punjab, India

butterflies have been reported from India (Varshney 2010a).
In particular, the state of Punjab is still unexplored in terms of its butterfly diversity and the available information is mainly restricted to that published by Rose & Sidhu (2001), who provided an inventory of 74 species of butterflies from Punjab; Arora et al. (2006), who gave a brief account of 74 species from the Punjab Shivaliks; and Sharma & Joshi (2009), who listed 41 species from Dholbaha Dam (Hoshiarpur). Thakur et al. (2002) listed 49 species of butterflies from a nearby sanctuary, Kalatop-Khajjiar Wildlife Sanctuary, Himachal Pradesh. However, information on the butterfly diversity of the various protected areas of Punjab is almost totally lacking.
It is precisely with this point in mind that while conducting 'General Faunistic Surveys' of Punjab under the mandate of the Zoological Survey of India in Kapurthala, Pathankot, Hoshiarpur and Rupnagar Districts, we were fortunate to have the opportunity to study the butterfly faunal diversity of Kathlaur-Kaushlian Wildlife Sanctuary on 10 and 11 November 2011. A preliminary account of the observations and collections made on the butterfly diversity of this sanctuary was prepared.

Material and Methods Study area
Kathlaur-Kaushlian Wildlife Sanctuary (KKWS) is situated in Pathankot District, which came into existence recently as the 22 nd district of Punjab on 28 July 2011. The sanctuary covers an area of approximately 767 hectares of which 140 hectares are in Kaushlian division and the remaining 627 hectares in Kathlaur division.

Methods
Collections Butterflies were hand-collected with a butterfly net and voucher specimens (non-schedule species under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972) preserved for identification. These have been deposited in the National Zoological Collection (NZC) at the Northern Regional Centre, Dehradun. The works of Evans (1932), Talbot (1939Talbot ( , 1947, Wynter-Blyth (1957), Haribal (1992 and Kehimkar (2008) were used to identify specimens to species and subspecies. Digital photographs were taken in the field of as many species as possible with the aid of a Nikon DX-80 digital camera but some had to be photographed from specimens in the collections of the Northern Regional Centre of ZSI, Dehradun. Latitude, longitude and altitude were recorded with the aid of a Garmin OREGON ® 550 hand-held GPS.
The abundance status provided here is based on an arbitrary frequency scale formulated from the present observations and was quantified as follows: Common (encountered 6-10 times), Less Common (3-5 times), and Uncommon (only once or twice). The habitats where the collections and observations were made were likewise classified into three broad categories: scrubby (mostly bushes), grassy (open grasslands) and riverine (bushes and grasses along streams and rivers).

Results
A total of 40 species belonging to 31 genera and five families were collected and identified (Images 1-40; image numbers correspond between Table 1 and the plates), including Libythea myrrha sanguinalis Fruhstorfer, which is new to the butterfly fauna of Punjab. Previously, this species was known from Kulu in Himachal Pradesh, India to Burma (Myanmar) (Evans 1932). Family-level analysis of the number of species revealed that the Nymphalidae were the most species rich with 22 species, followed by Pieridae (10 species), Lycaenidae (four species), and Papilionidae and Hesperiidae with two species each (Table 1, Fig. 1).
Observations on the relative abundances of the 40 species observed revealed that 19 species were common, 15 as less common and the remaining six species as uncommon (Table 1). Observations on their occurrences in the different habitats revealed that 13 species preferred the scrubby habitat, 13 scrubby/ grassy, seven the grassy habitat and the remaining seven the scrubby/riverine habitat (Table 1).
These preliminary observations on butterfly diversity of KKWS will serve as the basis for future studies on the ecology, biology and conservation of butterflies in Punjab in general and at KKWS in particular.