Vijay Barve

Road kills: Assessing insect casualties using flagship taxon

R. Shyama Prasad Rao* and M. K. Saptha Girish
Green Club, No. 1456, E&F Block, Ramakrishna Nagar,
Mysore 570 022, India

Roads and traffic are the central features of human development, but a severe threat to forest and wildlife. In this study we have assessed the extent of insect road kills in two national parks and a suburb-scrubland. The diversity and abundance of insect casualties were enumerated and compared across sites. Dragonflies and butterflies were the major insect kills with higher casualties on Sunday, which is associated with increased traffic load. Butterfly road kills were represented by high species diversity. This study reveals severity of invertebrate/insect casualties on road, conservation needs and surprising new frontiers of road ecology.

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Labels: insect

posted by Vijay Barve @ 9:13 PM