The Study of Diversity of Butterfly in Devkhop Area, District – Palghar, Maharashtra, India

Butterflies are one of the good indicators of environment quality of an ecosystem. Butterfly have specific habitat requirement depending upon the feeding and reproduction requirement. They play an important role in the food chain, food web and they are valuable pollinators in the local environment. Butterflies dependent on specific host plant in their developmental stages and hence their diversity indirectly reflects the plant diversity of a particular area. A study area to find out the butterfly diversity at the Devkhop area, Palghar, was carried out over a period of 6 months from October 2023 to March 2024. The study area has been divided into 3 zones agriculture zone, residential zone and forest zone. Total of 32 species of butterfly belonging to 5 families were recorded during the study period namely, Nymphalidae (12 species), Papilionidae (7 species), Hesperidae (2 species), Pieridae (6 species), Lycaenidae (5 species). Some beautiful species like blue mormon is also found in the study area.