A Review on Diversity of Grasshopper Species in India

An important part of a healthy ecosystem is that grasshoppers provide food for other animals and contribute to the natural environment by providing food for other animals. They also show evidence of changes in the environment by their presence. Grasshoppers are in the Caelifera family of insects, which means they belong to the Orthoptera order. Grasshopper species vary widely across India, as India has a wide variety of different plants and animals. Grasshoppers would be found in a number of locations, including dry areas, forests, meadows and farms. This study will examine different species of grasshoppers found in India, where they occur, their roles in the environment and the role they play in the economy. Over 1,000 different orthopteran species have been positively identified in India, with a large number of those being grasshoppers. Different factors will determine what types of these insects will live in a particular geographic area including the different species of plants and animals, climate of the location, human activity, and many other environmental conditions. The ecological system can gain benefits or suffer from grasshoppers; while many of them are pests that do great harm to crops, many of them play an important role in cycling of nutrients and also provide food to animals higher up the food chain. Recent research has established grasshoppers as acceptable indicators of the ecological condition of grassland and forest habitats; yet their distribution and diversity are increasingly threatened by the impacts of habitat alteration, pesticide application and climate change. This paper provides a detailed account of the diversity of grasshoppers in India as a summary of several studies dealing with the ecology, taxonomy and environmental aspects of grasshoppers. The results from these studies indicate that continued support for conservation activities, environmentally-friendly pest control techniques and further investigation of under-explored areas and species is needed.