Nocturnal Pollination: The Role of Moths in Ecosystem Services in Karanjali village form Nashik District, Maharashtra

Abstract Moths, although typically overshadowed by daytime pollinators such as bees and butterflies, play an important role in nocturnal fertilization and services to the ecosystem. This study looks on the diversity, behavior, and biotic impact of moths in the Karanjali village of Nashik district of Maharashtra, India. We focus on the important plant species pollinated by moths and investigate the effect of human activities on nocturnal pollination. Our findings highlight the crucial role of moths in maintaining biodiversity and agricultural productivity, advocating for intensified conservation efforts. Though the network-based approach has made significant contributions to the investigation of plant-pollinator interactions, our present knowledge regarding their functional organization favors diurnal pollinators. Despite the release of various studies attempting to address this diurnal bias, nocturnal pollinators have been consistently neglected. We investigated whether include this underappreciated group of pollinators has a significant impact on the overall architecture of three high mountain plant-pollinator networks. The inclusion of nocturnal moth pollinators altered network features by reducing total connection, connectome, heatedness, and resilience to plant extinction while enhancing web asymmetry and modularity. Midnight moths were not selectively linked to the most associated plants in the networks, and they were only prearranged into a single "night" module in one of the three networks.