Cabbage White. © Peter Smetacek

It is generally believed that similar plant communities support similar insect communities. In the course of sampling moth communities in the preceding project, it turned out that the moth communities in forests of Himalayan Oak were quite different at different elevations in the Kumaon Himalaya, although the forest is supposed to be of the same type. This project aims to find out whether the same forest type actually supports different insect communities by breeding as many moths and butterflies as possible. If a significant proportion of these insects feed on plants that occur at both high and low elevation but the insects occur only at one or the other elevation, it will indicate that factors other than merely the presence of a larval foodplant are responsible for the distribution of Lepidoptera. If a significant proportion of the discovered foodplants only occur at either higher or lower elevation, it will indicate that the forest types should be treated separately rather than lumped together on the basis of a similar nodal species.

Besides hoping to settle this matter one way or another, it is hoped that much new data on insect-plant dependence in this area will emerge. Since the search is for caterpillars, the scope of this project has been broadened to include butterflies, too. This data will provide a baseline for future conservation initiatives, besides broadening our understanding of Himalayan biodiversity.