A preliminary checklist of the Rhopalocera of Majathal wildlife sanctuary, Himachal Pradesh, India (Insecta

The current study results from a two-month faunal assessment survey of the Majathal Wildlife Sanctuary, Himachal Pradesh. In total, 54 species from six Lepidoptera families were documented. Herein we present a preliminary checklist procured from the data collected during the short duration of two months. This checklist establishes a baseline for the Rhopalocera diversity of Majathal Wildlife Sanctuary.


Introduction
The Lepidoptera have been thoroughly studied by taxonomists, making them one of the most extensively examined insect groups (Robbins & Opler, 1997).Rhopalocera play a crucial role in the ecosystem as they engage in the important task of visiting diverse flowers to nourish themselves with nectar.This act of seeking nectar not only sustains the Rhopalocera but also serves as a vital mechanism for pollination (Tiple et al. 2006).Since the early 18th century, systematic studies on Rhopalocera have been conducted, which resulted in the identification of approximately 18,000 species across the Globe (Martinez et al. 2003).The total number of butterfly species in India is 1,327 (Varshney & Smetacek, 2015;Upadhye et al. 2020).
Majathal wildlife sanctuary is spread over the hilly terrains of the Solan and Shimla districts of Himachal Pradesh.The Sutlej River bounds the sanctuary to the north and a mountain ridge to the south; it is part of the catchment area of the Sutlej.The altitude of the sanctuary varies from 575 m, asl. to 1975 m asl.The average precipitation is 1000 mm per annum, and the temperature ranges from 1ºC (winter) to 40ºC (summer).

Materials and methods
This study was carried out during the faunal assessment of the Majathal wildlife sanctuary.We surveyed the sanctuary area for two months, from 01-III-2021 to 30-IV-2021.During the survey, 54 species of Rhopalocera were recorded within the confines of the protected area.
We visited the field mainly during the daytime, 6 AM to 10 AM and 12 PM to 6 PM.We used a Nikon Monarch 3 binoculars to spot the butterflies and captured them using Nikon D5600 DSLR and Nikon COOLPIX P1000 telephoto digital camera.No specimens were collected or preserved during the study.Kunte (2000), Kehimkar (2008), Varshney (2010), Varshney & Smetacek (2015), and Smetacek (2017) were followed for identification alongside the expert consultations and comments.

Results and discussion
We found 54 species of Rhopalocera belonging to six families (Figure 1).Nymphalidae dominates the checklist with 24 species, followed by Lycaenidae having ten, and Pieridae with eight species.We further recorded six species of Papilionidae, five Hesperiidae, and a single species belonging to Riodinidae.A detailed checklist of the butterflies recorded in the Majathal wildlife sanctuary is presented in Table 1.All 54 species recorded during the survey are given in Figure 2. and Figure 3.No previous studies are available in this area so no comparisons could be made.Forest fires are very common in the sanctuary (Bhardwaj et al. 2022), posing a significant threat to the Rhopalocera populations.In addition, two cement manufacturing units are in the vicinity of the protected area, which could be a pollution threat to the sanctuary.Necessary measures should be taken, such as creating and maintaining good fire lines within the fire-prone areas of the sanctuary to conserve the butterfly populations.This checklist is important as it yields the baseline information which could be further expanded by consequent surveys.We recorded 55 species within the short duration of two months and believe that there is more to it and suggest the site be thoroughly surveyed for a longer duration.