Faunistic study of butterflies (Lepidoptera, Papilionoidea) of Sulaymaniyah Province, Kurdistan-Iraq

Khudhur, Farhad A.

doi:10.3897/bdj.10.e82612

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 13 publications

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“…Therefore, the conservation and the Diversity of butterfly species (especially the pollinators) requires a broad understanding of their foraging behavior and their spatio-temporal distribution in agricultural habitats 25 ; however, most specialized butterfly species usually depend on a limited set of host plants for their larval stage, or they use a limited number of nectar sources, even when a large number of nectar-producing plants are available 26,27 ; butterflies also tend to use areas within the site where host plants are located near nectar sources or chose the host plants for laying eggs on the host plants close to the nectar sources; thus the correlation of egg laying and feeding on nectar must be studied according to the abundance of the host plants and nectar sources 28 . Despite the Diversity of butterflies in many natural habitats and their importance, especially concerning their ecological, behavioral, and functional role (especially pollination) 5,8 , little research has been done about the role of butterflies on the Biodiversity in Iraq [29][30][31][32] . In agricultural ecosystems, many butterfly species play an essential role as pollinators of several crops that humans depend on for their livelihoods 33,34 ; and no published data describe the Diversity of butterflies present in agricultural habitats in Iraq.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diversity of Butterflies associated with Brassicaceae crops in Basra, Iraq

Nasser Jaber,

Alyousuf,

Al-Saffar

2023

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The study aimed to investigate the seasonal presence and characterization of the group of butterflies (abundance, richness and biodiversity) in the agroecosystem of Brassicaceae plants in the Basra province. Two different ecosystem sites (Karmat Ali at the sedimentary habitat and Al-Zubair region at the desert habitat) were sampled during the growing season of 2020/2021. There are 823 and 507 individuals at the Karmat Ali and Al-Zubair sites, respectively; the specimens consist of 9 butterflies belonging to four families. The most abundant family was Nymphalidae (60%), followed by Lycainidae (28%) and Pieridae (9%), while Hesperiidae recorded the lowest relative abundance of 3%. The highest butterfly population was recorded for Vanessa Carudi, while Pieris rapae had the lowest density. The results showed differences in abundance, species richness, and Diversity of butterflies at the sites. The highest values of Diversity and richness were at Karmat Ali, compared to the Al-Zubair region. The study of butterflies' abundance and biodiversity indices indicated that environmental factors and the polyculture plantations support the butterfly population in agricultural habitats. Keywords: Basra; Biodiversity; Brassicaceae; Butterflies; Shannon index; Richness.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diversity of Butterflies associated with Brassicaceae crops in Basra, Iraq

Nasser Jaber,

Alyousuf,

Al-Saffar

2023

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Additional records of lycaenid butterflies (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) to the butterfly fauna of Iraq

KHUDHUR,

FRIC,

HULA

et al. 2024

Zootaxa

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The Iraqi butterfly fauna includes more than 50 species of Lycaenidae, however, it is still largely undersampled and the country deserves wide-ranging surveys. Especially the family Lycaenidae is the most likely candidate group for new discoveries. This article adds two species of Lycaenidae to the Iraqi butterfly fauna. The first species is a native Western Palearctic, Tomares romanovi (Christoph, 1882) from mountains of the Kurdistan region, and the second species is an exotic invasive species with Nearctic origin, Brephidium exilis (Boisduval, 1852) from deserts of the south of Iraq.Globally, Lycaenidae is the second most diverse butterfly family, after Nymphalidae. It contains about 6,000 species, which forms about one third of all Papilionoidea (Pierce et al., 2002;van Nieukerken et al., 2011). In Iraq, Lycaenidae is represented by 51 species, 38 species were listed by Wiltshire (1957), later Higgins (1958 adding eight species, and Othman et al. (2018) and Said et al. (2018) recording two species decades later. Khudhur recently reported three new species (2021 and 2022). The vast majority of species in Iraq are distributed in the Kurdistan Region in the North and North East of the country (Othman et al. 2018; Said et al. 2018; Khudhur 2022).The genus Tomares Rambur 1840 is a Palearctic member of a subfamily Theclinae, with about ten species (Nazari and ten Hagen, 2020). The genus in Iraq was so far only known by one species, T. callimachus (Eversmann, 1848), which occurs on the dry slopes of middle-altitude mountains (Wiltshire, 1957;Othman et al. 2018). The butterfly fauna of the neighboring countries confirms the occurrence of 6 additional species of Tomares in Turkey (Çalirkan and Yildiz, 2023) and 4 species in Iran (Rajaei et.al. 2023). Tomares romanovi (Christoph, 1882) is among those Tomares species found in Iran and Turkey. Furthermore, T. romanovi is distributed in the highlands of Transcaucasia, Kopet-Dagh and Armenia (Korb and Bolshakov, 2011).The genus Brephidium Scudder, 1876 contains few species in subfamily Polyommatinae with a disjunct distribution in the Nearctic region and Africa. The genus has three species, two of which are distributed in the southern parts of the United States and Mexico, and one in South and South Eastern Africa (Pohl and Nanz, 2023). Brephidium exilis (Boisduval, 1852) (Western Pygmy Blue) is a species of Nearctic origin, first described in the United States. The species was found during the mid-nineties on the Arabian Peninsula as an exotic invasive species, probably imported as immature stages by plant cultivars from the United States. First record of its existence on the Eastern Arabian Peninsula dates back to 1995 from Sharjah in UAE. Later it was recorded also in

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