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BUTTERFLY AND ITS CONSERVATION WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO PAPILIONIDS OF WESTERN ASSAM

Arnab Bose

Butterfly is one of the most colourful and beautiful creatures in the world. Is that sufficient to support their real beauty? The answer is simply no. We have some floating ideas in our mind that they are just beautiful and symbol of love and happiness, but we do not think seriously about their life , how they fly, how they eat, how they manage to escape from predators, and how they transform in to their ultimate adult form. Its just amazing. We have very limited and bookish knowledge about their life cycle that starts from egg to caterpillar, caterpillar to pupa and finally pupa to adult form, i.e., Butterfly. But very few people try to enjoy the amazing behavior which is performed by this creature---how the dramatic changes occur during the transformation from one form to another, during the life cycle. We are unfortunate enough that all these going on even in and around our garden, backyard, kitchen garden etc. without our notice. All laymen do not treat them as wildlife even. Butterfly plays vital role in our environment. It is the best pollinator next to honey bee, and is regarded as the bio-indicator of the environment. They also constitute the source of food for insectivorous birds. Therefore, decline in their population indicates the environmental degradation where insectivorous birds may face the food scarcity. The insectivorous and frugivorous birds generally used to disperse the seeds from one place to another. So if the population of such birds decline from a particular area, than their impact will be directly on the natural forest regeneration. So obviously butterfly forms an important part of nature's food web and is the sensitive component of the environment. The butterflies along with moths are placed systematically in the phylum Arthropoda, which means the creatures with jointed legs, class Insecta, the six legged creatures, order Lepidoptera, which means scaly wings. Morphologically, the wings are covered with minute scales, which are arranged like overlapping fish scales or roof tiles. If we pick up a butterfly or moth by it's wings, our fingers may become covered with fine dust made up of tiny scales, and the scales give them their colour. In the transparent wings, the scales are absent as in Dragonfly, House fly, Honey Bee etc. The order Lepidoptera is composed of five families, among them most members of Papilionidae are highly endangered. This family consists of generally large and most attractive butterflies, many of them are long tailed which roughly resemble those of the swallows (a kind of bird), Hence they are also known as Swallowtail Butterfly, including the India's largest of the butterflies. The Southern Birdwing measuring about 190mm in its wingspan. The similar species Common Birdwing, which is also distributed in western Assam. The butterfly fauna of India is rich with around 1500 species, which is close to 9% of the total species found in the world. I have recorded 122 species of butterfly representing 66 genera and 5 families from Western Assam till date. Out of the total, 19 species are from the family Papilionidae which indicates the presence of considerably a wide variety of plants from the family Aristolochiaceae, Annonaceae, Lauraceae, Magnoliaceae and Rutaceae in the urban, sub-urban and forest areas. They prefer the flowers of Lantana, Ixora, Mussaenda, Jatropha, Cosmos etc. Every where population as well as diversity is declining and specifically in case of Western Assam, it is also not exceptional. Butterfly is one of them which showing rapid declination with the declination of plant species. Among them, few from the family Papilionidae with genera Troides and Pachliopta which uses only the plants of the family Aristolochiaceae as larval food plant has been declining in a rapid pace. I found two reasons behind this, a. all the plants belongs to the family Papilionidae are creeper and they ascend the tree by creeping tree trunk. These creepers are declining along with the large scale tree felling. b. Another reason is the plant group having good medicinal value but with the modernization we are losing traditional medicinal practice day by day and getting dependent solely on the allopathic medicinal practice. As a result we are losing the knowledge over plants having medicinal value. Earlier villagers used to keep specific creepers of the family Aristolochiaceae for medicinal use as well as due to some beliefs that the plant keeps snake away. Due to lack of awareness, we ignore the larval foodplants or treat them as weed. So in that way we may become responsible for killing last pair of endangered species unknowingly that leads to extinction. Unfortunately the misuse and extensive application of pesticides and weedicides, lead them towards local extinction. There are other factors like habitat destruction, degradation and fragmentation, grazing in forest areas, forest fires etc. which create fatal impact on their survival. In the course of my study for last 13 years, I have noticed that with the decrease of the food plants some butterflies are also declining. For example, I have not seen Lesser Batwing and Common Windmill both belongs to the family Papilionidae since 1999. So as to minimize the manmade hazards and to restore the food plants, which also have medicinal along with traditional, cultural and mythological value, we need to impart a drive for both scientific and awareness oriented programmes in various level. So it is the high time to realize the importance of conservation of such species placed in remotest part of the systematic position in the animal kingdom. And conservation is possible only by the concerted effort which can make a difference.
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