Faunal Diversity of India

This paper summarizes what is known of the faunal diversity of India – its various ecosystems and species richness. The synthesis of the available relevant literature and studies carried out by scientists at Zoological Survey of India and other research/academic institutes indicates that 1,01,167 species of animals are known from India, out of 15,66,353 species in the world. With only 2.20% of the world’s land area, India accounts for 6.45% of its recorded faunal species. However, the inventory is detailed mostly in the case of commercially important higher animal groups, but preliminary with respect to minor phyla or microbial organisms. In terms of geographical coverage, probably only two-thirds of the total area of the country has so far been explored; the remote islands and other such ecosystems are virtually still unexplored. It is, therefore, likely that the magnitude of faunal diversity in India could be several times more than what is scientifically known today.