Biodivers Conserv (2009) 18:2343–2350

DOI 10.1007/s10531-009-9591-9

ORIGINAL PAPER

Acridids as indicators of disturbance in dry deciduous

forest of West Bengal in India

Hiroj Kumar Saha Æ Parimalendu Haldar

Received: 29 June 2008 / Accepted: 1 February 2009 / Published online: 13 February 2009
Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract Acridid communities are sensitive to anthropogenic disturbance and the

community structure of acridids plays vital role in functioning the forest ecosystem. They
are potentially useful bioindicators for conservation planning and habitat disturbances.
Acridid assemblages of three different habitat types based on degree of disturbance as
follows five natural sites, five moderately disturbed sites and five highly disturbed sites in
Chaupahari forest, West Bengal, India were studied. Diversity, abundance, equitability and
species richness of acridid were observed in respect to undisturbed and disturbed habitats.
The species richness and diversity of the sites tracked the intensity of disturbance, the
greatest value being associated with the natural site followed by the moderately disturbed
site and highly disturbed site. The highest species richness and diversity index indicate the
suitable habitat for acridid population. Statistical analysis infers that different species show
different behavior and the sites are also different in relation to different habitat types.

Keywords Acridids
Deciduous forest
Disturbance
Diversity
Equitability

Indicator

Introduction

Bioindicators are most effective when they are supported by a predictive understanding of
their responses to environmental stress and disturbance to help distinguished anthropogenic
impacts (Andersen 1999). The diversity, functional importance and sensitivity of grass-
hoppers make them excellent bioindicators for using assessment of ecological change
associated with land use (Armstrong and Van Hensbergen 1997; Samways 1997; Samways
and Sergeev 1997). Grasshoppers have several advantages for such studies, relating to its
long phonological presence, great body size, relatively easy catchability, determination and
high dominance, so that it became a main invertebrate group for biological indication in its
wider sense.

H. K. Saha
P. Haldar (&)

Department of Zoology, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan 731235, West Bengal, India
e-mail: pa_haldar@yahoo.co.in; hiroj1979@yahoo.co.in

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Acridids are one of the most dominant herbivorous insects which play an important role
in the functioning of forest ecosystem and potentially useful bioindicators for land man-
agement (Andersen et al. 2001). They form a major component of ecosystem biodiversity,
complexity and stability. They often contribute one of the dominant groups of arthropods
in terms of their contributions to diversity, abundance and biomass (Joern and Gaines
1990; Lockwood 1997). Fielding and Bruseven (1993a, b) showed that grasshopper species
composition differed among disturbance categories on several scales in North American
rangelands.
However, in India Joshi et al. (1999) studied the different habitats with degree of
disturbance by acridids on moist deciduous forest. But no details study was made in dry
deciduous forest. Here an attempt has been made to study to test the ability of acridid
diversity to indicate habitat characteristic and different levels of anthropogenic distur-
bances on dry deciduous forest in India.

Materials and methods

Study area

A total of 15 sites distributed among three habitat types based on degree of disturbance as
follows five natural sites (NS), five moderately disturbed sites (MDS) and five highly
disturbed sites (HDS). All the sampling area of NS habitat was interior to the forest which
was free from anthropogenic disturbances with trees, shrubs, herbs and grasses, whereas
MDS was with human interference having trees, grasses and a little clearing but HDS was
highly disturbed by human and grazing animals with trees, grasses and some open area
near to road side.
The present study was conducted in Chaupahari forest (3.05 km2), a dry deciduous type,
located near Santiniketan at approximately 23°290 N and 87°420 E with an average altitude of
58.9 m above sea level. During the study period temperature varied between 3.5 (February
2005) and 39.5°C (May 2006) and humidity ranged between 20 (April 2005) and 96% (July
2005) and rainfall varied between 0.00 (January 2006) and 98.5 mm (July 2005). The data
were obtained from the Meteorological department at Sriniketan, Visva-Bharati, and 18 km
away from the study area which was surrounded by the agricultural land.

Sampling

Acridids was surveyed a 10 m2 area at each site at 15 days intervals during June 2004–
May 2006 from 7.30 a.m to 10.30 a.m. From each sampling site the adult acridids were
collected by sweep net sampling which is the most commonly used method to estimate
grasshopper species composition (Joshi et al. 1999). Twenty sweeps of a 30 cm diameter
sweep net were taken from each area. All vegetation within an area was swept to a height
of 2 m as almost the entire acridid species are found within this range. The acridids were
collected and counted and brought to the laboratory for identification. All identifications
were confirmed from Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata.

Data analysis

Species diversity in each site each year was determined using the Shannon and Weaner
index (1949). This index was selected for analysis because it is the most commonly used to

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express the biodiversity richness and it is moderately sensitive to sample size (Castrezana
and Markow 2001). The most commonly used equitability measure (J = H0 /ln S) for
species diversity analysis. The study has been performed over 26 species in 1st year and 29
species in 2nd year by matlab program (6.0 versions) to compare sites, species and
interaction between them. The probability value (P-value) of each species over all sites
within communities as a function of habitats was conducted using two way anova (S-plus
4.0 versions).

Results

The selected habitat types with disturbance sites and dominant plant species are repre-
sented in Table 1. In total assemblage of 29 acridid species and relative abundance
percentage are displayed in Table 2. All the collected species in the study area are con-
sidered as pest except Coptacra sp., Epistaurus sinetyi, Eucoptacra sp., Gastrimargus
africanus africanus, and Heteracris pulchra. In the second year observation among 29
species only three less, i.e. Gelastorrhinus sp., Gesonula punctifrons and H. pulchra were
found in the first year observation (Table 3). The number of collected individuals greatly
varied among the species in both years. Five species, i.e. Dittopternis venusta, Aulaco-
bothrus luteipes, Tylotropidius varicornis, Phlaeoba infumata, and Truxalis indica were
dominant comprising about 73.15 and 70.21% of total number of individuals during 1st and
2nd year, respectively. But only one species i.e. D. venusta was the most dominant species
comprising about 34.29, and 30.91% of the total number of individuals collected during 1st
and 2nd year, respectively.
The species richness was quantified as the total number of species present at each site. It
was highest in NS (28) followed by the MDS (19) and HDS (12) in the 2nd year whereas
NS (26), MDS (21) and HDS (13) were observed in the 1st year, respectively. The highest
number of acridids was found in NS (788) followed by MDS (423) and (187) in the 2nd
year whereas NS (672), MDS (321) and HDS (147) were found in the 1st year,
respectively.

Table 1 Three investigated ‘‘habitat types’’ with disturbance sites and dominant plant species
NS (N1–N5) MDS (M1–M5) HDS (H1–H5)

Site No human disturbance, no
cattle & grazing animals
N2 Saccharum spontaneum
Linn. & S. robusta
N5 Acacia auriculiformis
Benth
N3 E. globossus & S. diander
N4 Evolvulus alisinoides Wall,
C. dactylon, C. aciculatus
& S. bengalense
N1 Vetivaria ziginoides (Linn.)
Nash & Cyperus rotundus
Linn.
NS natural site, MDS moderately disturbed site, HDS highly disturbed site
Site Less human disturbance, Site Highly disturbance by
no grazing animals human and grazing
animals
M1 Shorea robusta Gaertn. f. H3 S. robusta
M2 A. auriculiformis H1 A. auriculiformis
M4 Eucalyptus globossus Labill H5 E. globossus
M5 E. globossus, Sporobolus H4 A. auriculiformis,
diander (Retz.), C. Saccharum bengalense
aciculatus & S. bengalense Retz., & S. diander
M3 Chrysopogon aciculatus H2 Cyanodon dactylon L.
(Retz.)Trin. & C. dactylon Pers., E. globossus,
& S. bengalense

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Table 2 Species of acridids

Species name Relative
collected in Chaupahari forest
abundance (%)
and relative abundance
Dittopternis venusta (Walker) 32.6
Aulacobothrus luteipes (Walker) 16.0
Tylotropidius varicornis (Walker) 8.4
Phlaeoba infumata (Burnner) 7.0
Truxalis indica (Bolivar) 6.9
Chrotogonus trachypterus trachypterus (Blanchard) 4.7
Atractomorpha crenulata (Fabricius) 4.4
Catantops pinguis innotabilis (Walker) 4.1
Aulacobothrus sp. 2.8
Oxya fuscovittata (Marschall) 2.0
Aiolopus thalassinus tamulus (Fabricius) 1.8
Gastrimargus africanus orientalis (Sjostedt) 1.5
Oedaleus abruptus (Thunberg) 1.2
Spathosternum prasiniferum prasiniferum (Walker) 0.9
Tristria pulvinata (Uvarov) 0.9
Phlaeoba panteli (Bolivar) 0.8
Oxya hyla hyla (Serville) 0.6
Epistaurus sinetyi (Bolivar) 0.6
Heiroglyphus banian (Fabricius) 0.5
Leva cruciata (Bolivar) 0.4
Gastrimargus africanus africanus (Saussure) 0.4
Coptacra sp. 0.3
Catantops sp. 0.3
Acrida exaltata (Walker) 0.2
Eucoptacra sp. 0.2
Gelastorrhinus sp. 0.2
Trilophidia annulata (Thunberg) 0.1
Gesonula punctifrons (Stal.) 0.1
Heteracris pulchra (Bolivar) 0.1

Diversity was function of disturbance with the undisturbed habitat NS (1.0331) having
the highest value followed by the MDS (0.9205) and HDS (0.7100) in the 2nd year while
NS (1.0234), MDS (0.9191) and HDS (0.6659) in the 1st year, respectively. Equitability
index also tracked disturbance with greatest value being associated with NS (0.3141), MDS
(0.3018) and HDS (0.2596) in 1st year whereas MDS (0.3126), NS (0.3100) and HDS
(0.2857) were observed in the 2nd year, respectively.
The species like Catantops sp., Coptacra sp., E. sinetyi, Eucoptacra sp., Gelastorrhinus
sp., H. pulchra and Trilophidia annulata, were present only NS habitat whereas totally
absent in both HDS and MDS habitats in both 1st and 2nd year observation. The species
like Chrotogonus trachypterus trachypterus, Oxya fuscovittata, Oedaleus abruptus and
Gastrimargus africanus orientalis comprised markedly greater proportion of the acridid
communities in disturbed habitats. F statistic (Table 4) have been calculated as followed:
F1 [ 3.0, F2 [ 1.52 and F3 [ 1.35 in the 1st year observation, whereas F1 [ 3.0,
F2 [ 1.46 and F3 [ 1.33 in the 2nd year observation can inferred that different species

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Table 3 Community structure of acridids at three different habitats in Chaupahari forest

Species name 1st year 2nd year

NS MDS HDS P-value NS MDS HDS P-value

D. venusta 157 146 88 \0.05** 191 163 102 \0.01***

A. luteipes 113 36 8 \0.001**** 169 67 14 \0.01***
T. varicornis 101 11 0 \0.01*** 87 15 0 \0.001****
P. infumata 92 19 0 \0.01*** 52 14 0 \0.001****
T. indica 29 20 14 Not 53 39 21 \0.05**
C. pin. innotabilis 32 7 0 \0.01*** 53 12 0 \0.05**
A. crenulata 25 11 3 \0.1* 49 15 7 Not
Aulacobothrus sp. 23 6 0 \0.05** 31 10 0 \0.1*
C. tra. trachypterus 9 15 13 Not 17 38 17 Not
O. fuscovittata 7 11 4 Not 8 14 6 Not
A. tha. tamulus 11 7 4 Not 12 5 2 Not
T. pulvinata 10 2 0 Not 12 0 0 \0.05**
P. panteli 11 3 0 \0.05** 5 0 0 \0.05**
G. afr. orientalis 3 8 5 Not 4 10 6 Not
E. sinetyi 10 0 0 \0.05** 5 0 0 \0.05**
S. pr. prasiniferum 7 3 0 \0.05** 8 4 2 Not
O. abruptus 4 5 3 Not 3 8 6 Not
Coptacra sp. 6 0 0 \0.1* 2 0 0 Not
H. banian 4 1 2 Not 5 2 0 Not
Catantops sp. 5 0 0 \0.1* 2 0 0 Not
O. hyla hyla 2 4 1 Not 4 2 2 Not
Eucoptacra sp. 4 0 0 \0.1* 2 0 0 Not
Gelastorrhinus sp. 0 0 0 NA 4 0 0 Not
L. cruciata 2 2 0 Not 2 3 0 Not
G. afr. africanus 1 3 1 Not 0 1 2 Not
A. exaltata 2 1 1 Not 2 0 0 Not
G. puctifrons 0 0 0 NA 2 1 0 Not
T. annulata 2 0 0 Not 2 0 0 \0.1*
H. pulchra 0 0 0 NA 2 0 0 Not

NS natural site, MDS moderately disturbed site, HDS highly disturbed site
Level of significance (P-value): * 10%; ** 5%; *** 1%; **** 0.1%

show different behavior and the sites are also different in relation to different habitat types.
The frequencies of the species among habitats differed significantly (P \ 0.0001) in both
the years.

Discussion

The importance of acrididoids to the insect community of deciduous forest in India (Vats
and Mittal 1991) has immediate relevance to conservation biology and ecological man-
agement. The role of orthopterans as indicators is important for nature conservation,

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Table 4 Comparative study of statistical analysis of two consecutive years

1st year Sources 2nd year

F value Mean Sq Sum of Sq Df Df Sum of Sq Mean Sq F value

(F1–F3) (F1–F3)

53.77 30.43 60.87 2 Site 2 63.38 31.69 57.26

29.97 16.96 424.09 25 Species 28 603.52 21.55 38.94
3.41 1.93 96.72 50 Interaction 56 110.01 1.96 3.54
0.56 220.71 390 Residuals 435 240.74 0.55

because they are good indicators of grassland disturbance (Baldi and Kisbenedek 1997).
The dynamic of grasshopper biodiversity in closely related to changes in the spatial pattern
and the structure of vegetation (Miller and Onsager 1991). Acridid abundance and species
diversity were highest in NS habitat in both years may be linked to its high diversity of
plants and no anthropogenic disturbance by human or grazing animals. Most abundant
grass species such as Chrysopogon aciculatus, Cyanodon dactylon, Cyperus rotundus,
Evolvulus alisinoides, Saccharum bengalense, Saccharum spontaneum and Sporobolus
diander were found in the NS habitat. The change in vegetation community diversity can
cause variation in the special pattern of grasshopper biodiversity (Guo et al. 2006). Veg-
etation strongly influenced the species composition (Fielding and Bruseven 1995).
According to Our observation confirm to the consistent finding of overseas studies that
grasshopper species assemblages are highly sensitive to features of habitat, including level
of disturbance (Kemp et al. 1990a, b; Kemp 1992; Samways and Sergeev 1997).
In HDS habitat the population of acridids and species number was very less in com-
parison to NS and MDS habitat because HDS habitat was highly disturbed by grazing
animal and human interferes. Higher species diversity may be important in maintaining
ecosystem functioning (Yachi and Loreau 1999; Chesson et al. 2002). From our results, it
may be inferred that greater species diversity was observed in the natural habitat compared
with other habitat corresponded with species richness of acridid species during the study
period. The undisturbed habitat had the highest abundant and diversity (Joshi et al. 1999).
Ecological diversity may contribute importantly to various aspects of ecosystem sta-
bility (Walker 1995; Hobbs et al. 1995; Peterson et al. 1998). Huston (1994)showed that
disturbance is an important mechanism, maintaining the species diversity. Fielding and
Bruseven (1993a, b) found that in North America rangelands the most disturbed sites had
the lowest species richness and diversity. Similar results were found by Parmenter et al.
(1991) that the species richness, diversity and evenness measure were higher on undis-
turbed than on disturbed sites. Our analysis showed very similar patterns for diversity and
species richness as above mention studies. On the basis of total number of individuals
collected one species, i.e. D. venusta was found to be dominant in all habitats. This could
be attributed to the fact that D. venusta appeared to have greater ecological plasticity as it
is able to reproduce and increase in its population in different habitats although majority of
the collected species are pest according to the Pictorial Handbook on Indian Short-Horned
Grasshopper Pests (Acridoidea: Orthoptera; Mandal et al. 2007).
Acridid species appear to be negatively affected by anthropogenic disturbances. The
species like C. tra. trachypterus, O. fuscovittata, O. abruptus and G. afr. orientalis com-
prised markedly greater proportion of the acridid communities in disturbed habitats whereas
Aulacobothrus sp., Catantops pinguis innotabilis, Tristria pulvinata and T. varicornis were
most abundant in NS habitat but absent in HDS habitat. With respect to potential indicator

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species, the rarest species, i.e. Catantops sp., Coptacra sp., Eucoptacra sp., E. synetyi,
Gelastorrhinus sp., H. pulchra, and T. annulata were found only in the natural sites.

Conclusion

It is demonstrated that the diversity of inhabitant acridids varies with the level of habitat
disturbance of a particular place and possess specificity for habitat characteristic in the
forest ecosystem. The present study reveals that diversity, species richness and equitability
of acridids were lowest in disturbed habitats. Therefore, disturbed habitats may be con-
sidered as ‘‘unhealthy’’ and the acridids in this study could be successfully used for
bioindication of forest ecosystem disturbance.

Acknowledgments Authors are thankful to the Ministry of Environment and Forest, New Delhi for the
financial assistance. We thank Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata for confirming the identification of
different acridids species. Our thanks are also due to Prof. P. Nath, Head, Dept. of Zoology, Visva- Bharati
University for providing laboratory facilities.

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