Comparative study of species composition, diversity of mosquitoes [Diptera: Culicoidea (Meigen, 1818)] in the Eastern and Western regions of India

Abstract

Mosquitoes are important insects throughout the world because they are vectors of various diseases in the human population. Out of the 3700 mosquito species known to exist worldwide, 393 are found in India. After Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, India is the fifth most mosquito-diverse country. Mosquito diversity was discovered to be highly dependent on environmental factors such as temperature, relative humidity, and altitude, resulting in varying species composition and diversity across the Indian subcontinent. The diversity and species composition of mosquitoes in India's eastern and western regions were compared, and there was a significant difference in diversity. A total of 22 mosquito species belonging to Aedes, Culex, Anopheles, Culiseta, Toxorhynchites, and Armigeres were observed in the eastern region of India. In the western region of India, a total of 26 mosquito species belonging to the Aedes, Culex, and Anopheles families were observed. The calculated value of Sorenson's Coefficient was 0.1666, indicating that community similarity did not show much overlap and that Anopheles was the dominant genus in the studied region. The Bray-Curtis dissimilarity index was estimated at 0.7143 showed much dissimilarity between investigated two regions which showed much dissimilarity in the species composition of mosquitoes between the studied areas. This work is significant for the study of the adverse effect of mosquitoes on the human population.