For verification of this paper, please visit on http://www.socialresearchfoundation.com/researchtimes.php#8

Class Insecta is largest group of animal in phylum Arthropoda which covers around 32 orders of different family. Insect pollinators are essential to the life-cycle of many flowering plant species on which most organisms, including humans, are at least partly dependent; without them, the terrestrial portion of the biosphere (including humans) would be devastated (Vincent Brian Wigglesworth, 2012). All insects undergo a series of changes in morphological characterstic which is generally known as incomplete or complete metamorphosis; all insects hatch from eggs, but some develop and hatch from inside the womb in live births. The class of Insects can be differentiated into two sub-classes in which first one is Winged also known as Pterygota group of insects and other is wingless insects or Aptergota. It is possible that the Thysanura themselves are not monophyletic, with the family Lepidotrichidae being a sister group to the Dicondylia (Pterygota and the remaining Thysanura) (Gilliott,1995; Kapoor, 1998). Both Paleoptera and Neoptera are winged group of insects which can be identified on the basis of hardened body parts called sclerites, similarly in Neoptera presence of muscle. On the basis of metamorphosis Neoptera are further differentiated into complete and incomplete forms. The recent molecular finding that the traditional louse orders Mallophaga and Anoplura are derived from within Psocoptera has led to the new taxon Psocodea (Johnson et al., 2004). Phasmatodea and Embiidina have been suggested to form Eukinolabia (Terry and Whiting, 2005). Mantodea, Blattodea and Isoptera are thought to form a monophyletic group termed Dictyoptera (Lo, Nathan et al., 2000). The main purpose of the present study is to collect and identify the insect species to know their diversity richness and abundance in the nearby locality of Doon valley which were collected.

Insects are a class of invertebrates within the arthropod phylum that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes and one pair of antennae. The number of extant species is estimated at between six and ten million, (Chapman, 2006; Vojtech Novotny, 2002; Erwin, 1997) and potentially represent over 90% of the differing animal life forms on Earth. (Erwin, 1982) Insects may be found in nearly all environments, although only a small number of species reside in the oceans, a habitat dominated by another arthropod group, crustaceans. Rao et al., (1973) in an article on haematophagous arthropods in western Himalaya recorded as many as 78 species under 36 genera from Dehradun district. Bhat (1975), in a study on Haematophagous arthropods in the Himalayan region, recorded 63 species of mosquitoes under 9 genera and added information on geographical range along with ecological notes. Till then there was no record on blood sucking insects except the mosquitoes (Srivastava & Jauhari, 1992; Mahesh & Jauhari, 2000, 2003; Pemola & Jauhari 2004). The following entomologists such as Blackman(1965), Odum (1971), Singh et al.,(1987), Wilson(1988), Alfred and Subha Rao (1997), Hodek and Honek (1998), Hack and Mace (1998), Ghosh and Singh (2000), Omkar and Srivastava (2000), Sathe and Bhosale (2001), Omkar and Bind (2004), Sahayaraj (2004) and Prerana Prakhar et al., (2021) conducted studies on various groups of insects.

1. Methods of Collection i. By hand picking- Small insects, specially the soft bodied ones should be collected by hand either with the help of a fine camel hair brush or by a forceps. ii. By sweeping- Sweeping with a proper net yield satisfactory result while collecting from herbage. Sweeping nets must be of tough cloth. A 50-60 cm strong handle with 50 cm depth bag is quite good. iii. By trapping-. A trap is any device containing something to which the insects are attracted and which is so arranged that once the insects get into it they cannot get out. Some common types of traps are used in insect collection like Light trap. 2. Material of Collection i. Insect Nets- A net essentially consists of a cloth bag or nylon net bag, a metal ring which holds the mouth of the open bag, and a handle to which the metal ring is attached. According to the types of insect and methods of collection many types of nets are commonly used like Aerial net, sweep net etc. ii. Killing bottle- Killing bottles of various sizes and shapes may be used depending on the type of insects involved, and various materials used as the killing agent. 3. Mounting And Preserving Insects Collections, once made are to be preserved in a manner which provides scope to examine the specimen for the identification and study and also guarantees long period of storage, with proper care. Most specimens are pinned, and once dried will keep indefinitely. Specimens too small to pin can be mounted on pointes on tiny minute pins, or on microscope slides. Large and showy insects may be mounted in various types of glass-topped display cases. Soft-bodied forms, such as nymphs and larvae should be preserved in fluids like 70% alcohol.

A study on insect diversity in Doon Valley was carried out for a period of one year from January 2021 to December 2021. The total area selected for sampling was divided into 4 sites which include the Urban, Rural, Marshy and Industrial. Distribution pattern of insects in all the selected localities includes the spatial as well as temporal distribution pattern of insects. The study revealed the occurrence 12 different species belonging to 8 orders including Odonata, Dictyoptera, Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Diptera, Hymeoptera, Orthoptera and Hemiptera. All the species of different orders were collected from different habitat. A comparison in the insect diversity in respect of collected orders has been presented in Table 1while the Fig. 1& 2 represents the temporal analysis of insects which revealed that the maximum abundance was recorded by Dictyoptera followed by Lepidoptera, Odonata while minimum abundance was recorded by Hymeoptera. The present study also revealed that the insects were maximum found in urban area followed by marshy, industrial and rural area. The findings of present study was found similar with Sarmistha Jana et al., 2009 who studied the Diversity and community structure of aquatic insects in a pond in Midnapore town, West Bengal, India and recorded maximum abundance of Odonata. Unlike as in the present investigation where Odonata and Dictyoptera was the most common insects, Khan and Ghosh (2001) in West Bengal and Painkra et al., who studied the Biodiversity of insects in Ambikapur of Chhattisgarh.. The outcomes of present study are close to Prerana Prakhar et al., (2021) who worked on the study of insect diversity in different habitats found in nearby locality of Raipur.

Table1: Distribution of Insect diversity   

Fig.1: Showing the monthly abundance of insects during study period in Doon valley

Fig. 2: Collected insects of different orders during the study period.

Sl.No.	Locality/Area	Insect species
1.	Urban	Bradinopyga geminate, Trithemis aurora, Periplanata Americana, Epilachna vigintioctopunctata, Papilio polyxenes, Pieris brassicae and Musca domestica
2.	Rural	Trithemis aurora, Bradinopyga geminate, Epilachna vigintoctopunctata and Musca domestica
3.	Marshy	Heiroglyphus banion, Acheta domestica, Bagrada cruciferum and Pieris brassicae
4.	Industrial	Monomorium destructor, Musca domestica and Periplanata americana

1. Alfred, J.R.B. and Subha Rao, N.V. (1997): Biodiversity (fauna) in India: An overview. ENVIS Newsletter, 4: 2-6. 2. Blackman, R.L. (1965): Studies on specificity in Coccinellidae. Ann. Appl. Biol., 56: 336-338 3. Bhat, H.R. (1975): A survey of Haematophagous Arthropods in Western Himalayas, Sikkim and hill districts of West Bengal, Records of mosquitoes collected from Himalayan region of Uttar Pradesh with ecological notes. Indian J. Med. Res., 63:1583-1608 4. Chapman, A. D. (2006): Numbers of living species in Australia and the World. Canberra: Australian Biological Resources Study. pp. 60pp. ISBN 978-0-642-56850-2. 5. Engel, Michael S. and David, A. G. (2004): New light shed on the oldest insect Nature 427 (6975): 627–630. doi:10.1038/nature02291. PMID 14961119 6. Erwin, Terry L. (1982): Tropical forests: their richness in Coleoptera and other arthropod species, Coleopt. Bull. 36: 74–75. 7. Ghosh, L.K. and Singh, R. (2000): Biodiversity of Indian insect with special reference toaphids (Homoptera: Aphididae). J. Aphidol. 14: 113-123. 8. Gilliott, C. (1995): Entomology (2 ed.). Springer-Verlag New York, LLC. pp. 820pp. ISBN 0-306-44967-6. 9. Hack and Mace, A. (1988): The Energetics of Male Mating Strategies in Field Crickets (Orthoptera: Gryllinae: Gryllidae). Journal of Insect Behavior (Springer Netherlands). 11: 853-867. 10. Hodek, I. and Honek, A. (1996): Ecology of Coccinellidae. Dordrecht: Kluwer Acad. Publ. 464pp 11. J. Sarmistha., Priti R., and Bhattacharya, T. (2009): Diversity and community structure of aquatic insects in a pond in Midnapore town, West Bengal, India. J. Environ. Biol. 30(2):283-287. 12. Johnson, K. P., Yoshizawa, K. and V, S. Smith. (2004): Multiple origins of parasitism in lice. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 271: 1771–1776. 13. Kapoor, V.C. (1998): Principles and Practices of Animal Taxonomy 1 (1 ed.). Science Publishers. p. 48. ISBN 1-57808-024-X. 14. Khan, R.A. and L.K. Ghosh (2001): Faunal diversity of aquatic insects in freshwater wetlands of South Eastern West Bengal. Z.S.I. Kolkata. p. 104 15. Lo, Nathan., Tokuda, G., Watanabe, H. and Noda, H. (2000): Evidence from multiple gene sequences indicates that termites evolved from wood-feeding cockroaches". E Current Biology 10 (13): 801–804. 16. Mahesh, R.K. and Jauhari, R.K. (2000): Resurgence of sylvatic mosquitoes in Doon Valley. J. Parasit. Appl. Anim. Biol., 9(1): 9-16. 17. Mahesh, R.K. and Jauhari, R.K. (2003): Mosquito fauna of the forested areas of Doon Valley (U.P.) India. Entomon, 28(2): 185-190. 18. Odum, E.P. (1971): Fundamentals of Ecology. W.B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia, 546 pp. 19. Omkar and Bind, R.B. (2004): Prey quality dependent growth, development and reproduction of a biocontrol agent, Cheilomenes sexmaculata (Fabricius) (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae). Biocontrol. Sci. Tech., 14: 665-673. 20. Omkar and Srivastava, S. (2000): Integrated Strategies of Insect Pest Management: An Overview. Indian Farmer’s Digest, 33(9): 29-34. 21. Painkra, G. P. and Painkra, K. L. (2018): Biodiversity of insects in Ambikapur of Chhattisgarh. 22. Pemola Devi, N. and Jauhari, R.K. (2004a): Altitudinal distribution of mosquitoes in mountainous areas of Garhwal region - Part I. J. Vect. Borne Dis., 41:17-26. 23. Pemola Devi, N. and Jauhari, R.K. (2004b): Mosquito records from Garhwal region (Uttaranchal). J. Expt. Zool. India, 7 (2) : 237-244. 24. Prakhar, P., Singh, M. and Agrawal, R.K. (2021): A Study of Insect Diversity in Different Habitats Found in Nearby Locality of Raipur, Chhattisgarh. International Journal of Scientific Research in Science and Technology, 8(5):467—473. 25. Rao, T.R., Dhanda, V., Bhat, H.R. and Kulkarni, S.M. (1973): A survey of haematophagous arthropods in Western Himalayas, Sikkim and Hill districts of West Bengal: A general account. Indian J. Med. Res., 61: 1421-1461. 26. Sahayaraj, K. (2004): In: Indian insect predators in biological control. Daya publishing House, New Delhi. pp 1-336. 27. Sathe, T.V. and Bhosale, Y.A. (2001): Insect pest predators. Daya Publishing House, Delhi. pp. 1-169. 28. Singh, H., Rohilla, H.R. and Kharub, S.S. (1987): Integration of chemical control of mustard aphid, Lipaphis erysimi (Kalt.) and safety of pollinators. Annals of Biology, 3(1): 105-106 29. Srivastava, N. and Jauhari, R.K. (1992): A preliminary report on the Anopheline fauna of Doon Valley. Indian J. Parasitol., 16(1):45-46. 30. Terry, M. D. and Whiting, M.F. (2005): Mantophasmatodea and phylogeny of the lower neopterous insects. Cladistics 21(3): 240–257 31. Vincent Brian Wigglesworth. (2012): "Insect". Encyclopædia Britannica online 32. Vojtech, N., Yves, B., Scott, E. M., George, D. W., Birgitta, B., Lukas, C. and Pavel, D. (2002): Low host specificity of herbivorous insects in a tropical forest". Nature 416 (6883): 841–844. 33. Wilson, E.O. (1988): The current state of biological diversity. In Wilson, E. O. (ed.), Biodiversity, National Academy Press: Washington, D.C. pp 3-18 34. Wilson, E.O. (2009): Threats to Global Diversity, 05-17.