Relationship between Diversity and Productivity at Ratargul Fresh Water Swamp Forest in Bangladesh

Abstract

One of the most concerned topics in ecology is the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. However, there are few field studies, carried out in forests, although many studies have been done in controlled experiments in grasslands. In this paper, we describe the relationship pattern between three facets of diversity and productivity at Ratargul Fresh Water Swamp Forest (RFWSF) in Bangladesh, which is the only remaining fresh water swamp forest of the country. Sixty sample plots were selected from RFWSF and included six functional traits including leaf area (LA), specific leaf area (SLA), leaf dry matter content (LDMC), tree height, bark thickness and wood density. In analyzing TD, we used Shannon diversity and richness indices, functional diversity was measured by Rao's quadratic entropy (Rao 1982) and Faith's (1992) index was used for phylogenetic diversity (PD). It was found that, TD, FD and PD were positively related with productivity (basal area) due to resource use complementarity but surprisingly the best predictor of tree productivity was FD. The results contribute to the understanding the effects of biodiversity loss and it is essential for conservation decision-making and policy-making of Ratargul Fresh Water Swamp Forest.

Anthropogenic disturbance modifies tree functional traits in the only remnant swamp forest of Bangladesh

“…At the end of the rainy season and during the dry season, soils in the forest area easily turn dry and hard. The soil moisture varies from 18.7 to 37.1% (Sharmin et al, 2016). The mean maximum temperature is approximately 32°C.…”

“…On the other hand, deciduous species perform better than evergreen species under ideal resource conditions (Berendse and Scheffer, 2009). Recent studies investigated the variation among functional traits in different functional ecosystems (Sharmin et al, 2016;Fyllas et al, 2020) as functional traits mediate the performance of the ecosystem (Diaz et al, 2004). (Kattge et al, 2011) Most of these studies, however, were conducted in relatively less complex grassland ecosystems (Roscher et al, 2012;Zuo et al, 2012) with only a few conducted in forests or wetlands (Roy et al, 2019).…”

Assessment of Plant Diversity of a Seasonal Tropical Wetland Forest Ecosystem in Bangladesh

“…Ratargul Swamp Forest (RSF) is one of the remaining fresh water swamp forests in Bangladesh. This falls under the category of fresh water wet evergreen forest (Sharmin et al, 2016). These swamp forests have a wide range of biological, hydrological, economic social, cultural and aesthetic values (Vijayakumar & Vasudeva, 2011).…”