Plant Community Structure in Tropical Rain Forest Fragments of the Western Ghats, India¹

Abstract

Changes in tree, liana, and understory plant diversity and community composition in five tropical rain forest fragments varying in area (18–2600 ha) and disturbance levels were studied on the Valparai plateau, Western Ghats. Systematic sampling using small quadrats (totaling 4 ha for trees and lianas, 0.16 ha for understory plants) enumerated 312 species in 103 families: 1968 trees (144 species), 2250 lianas (60 species), and 6123 understory plants (108 species). Tree species density, stem density, and basal area were higher in the three larger (> 100 ha) rain forest fragments but were negatively correlated with disturbance scores rather than area per se. Liana species density, stem density, and basal area were higher in moderately disturbed and lower in heavily disturbed fragments than in the three larger fragments. Understory species density was highest in the highly disturbed 18‐ha fragment, due to weedy invasive species occurring with rain forest plants. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling and Mantel tests revealed significant and similar patterns of floristic variation suggesting similar effects of disturbance on community compositional change for the three life‐forms. The five fragments encompassed substantial plant diversity in the regional landscape, harbored at least 70 endemic species (3.21% of the endemic flora of the Western Ghats–Sri Lanka biodiversity hotspot), and supported many endemic and threatened animals. The study indicates the significant conservation value of rain forest fragments in the Western Ghats, signals the need to protect them from further disturbances, and provides useful benchmarks for restoration and monitoring efforts.

Diversity of understory plants in undisturbed and disturbed tropical lowland forests of Little Andaman Island, India

“…The disturbances such as cattle grazing and human influences led to increased representation of Asteraceae as one of the dominant families in the present study. Muthuramkumar et al (2006) made similar findings in the unprotected disturbed forest of Valparai in Indian Western Ghats.…”

“…There are a few quantitative studies on understory plants from neotropics (Smith 1970;Hall and Swaine 1981;Gentry and Dodson 1987;Levey 1988;Poulsen and Balslev 1991;Poulsen and Nielsen 1995;Tuomisto and Poulsen 1996;Tuomisto et al 1998Tuomisto et al , 2002Costa and Magnusson 2002;Leopold and Salazar 2008) and old world tropics (Kiew 1978;Poulsen and Pendry 1995;Poulsen 1996a, b;Newbery et al 1996;Turner et al 1996;Laska 1997;Svenning 2000;Bobo et al 2006;Ramadhanil et al 2008). In India, the understory plant diversity inventories were mainly focused in the Western Ghats (Gopisundar 1997;Annaselvam and Parthasarathy 1999;Bhat and Utkarsh 1999;Bhat and Murali 2001;Muthuramkumar et al 2006) and little is known from the Eastern Ghats (Chittibabu and Parthasarathy 2000) and Himalayas (Ram et al 2004;Upadhaya et al 2006).…”

Plant Species Composition and Their Conspecific Association in Natural Tropical Rainforest, South Papua

“…Those can be distinguished based on stories or layer in tropical rainforest (Swaine, Whitmore, & Swaine, 1988). For an example, in tropical forest vines are found abundantly (Campbell, Magrach, & Laurance, 2015;Muthuramkumar et al, 1998;Wright, Calderón, Hernandéz, & Paton, 2004). The presence of ferns have been studied e.g.…”

Multi-stakeholder perceptions of efficiency in biodiversity conservation at limited access forests of the southern Western Ghats, India

“…It harbours forest types ranging from tropical dry scrub, dry deciduous, moist deciduous, semi-evergreen and evergreen forests to montane shola grasslands (Daniels 2003;Muthukumar et al 2006). Nearly 1000 acres of degraded rainforest fragments are distributed across coffee, tea and cardamom estates, surrounded by four protected areas, viz., Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary, Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, Eravikulam National Park and Parambikulam Wildlife Sanctuary (Raman & Mudappa 2003).…”