Diversity and foraging behaviour of insect pollinators in onion Karuppaiah V.*, Soumia P.S., Wagh Priyanka D. ICAR-Directorate of Onion and Garlic Research, Rajgurunagar, Pune, 410505 *Email: karuppaiahv2008@gmail.com
Online published on 5 February, 2019. Abstract An experiment was carried out to examine the diversity and foraging behaviour of major insect pollinators in onion. Eleven insect species viz., Apis florea, A.cerana, A. dorsata, A. mellifera, Tetragonula sp., Xylocopa sp., Vespa sp., Pieris rapae, Danais chrysippus, Eristalis sp. and Musca domestica were observed pollinating. Of these 98% of forage visits were of hymenopterans, with most of these happening during 1330–1430 hrs. The Berger-Parker index of abundance computed revealed that A. dorsata was the dominant. The analysis of foraging behaviour revealed that maximum foraging was by A. cerana (3.17 umbels/min) followed by A. dorsata (3.0 umbels/min) and the least with A. florea (2.0 umbels/min). Time spent/flower was the maximum with Tetragonula sp. (27.50 sec/umbel) followed by A.florea (18.83 sec/umbel) and A. dorsata (17.83 sec/umbel) and the least with A. cerana. Top Keywords Onion, insect pollinators, species diversity, abundance, foraging visits, time spent/flower, Apis spp, Tetragonula sp. Top |