author(s)
Padhiyar DH and Patel SR

abstract
The study reported the floral biology and insect pollinator diversity in bottle gourd. The bottle gourd flowers found to blooming in the late evening. The anthesis of flowers was started at 17:53 hrs whereas the stigma emergence was started from 17:46 hrs. In case of flower visitors, the bottle gourd flowers were found to be visited by total nine species of pollinators belonging to eight families and five orders. The species constituted four lepidopterans, two coleopterans and one each from hemiptera, orthoptera and odonata. Among all the insects visitors, lepidopterans were the major visitors (44.44%) followed by coleoptera (22.22%), hemiptera (11.11%), orthoptera (11.11%) and odonata (11.11%). Among all the species, Nesidiocoris spp. was the predominant (37.65%) followed by Haptones spp. and Aulacophora foevicollis constituting 31.76 per cent and 9.41 per cent respectively. The mean activity of flower visitors was more at 18:00 hrs (30 visits/m²/5min) and no activity of flower visitors was observed at 06:00 hrs to 07:00 hrs and 10:00 hrs to 14:00 hrs.