Saurashtra University Re – Accredited Grade ‘B’ by NAAC (CGPA 2.93) V., Deepak, 2011, “Ecology and Behaviour of Travancore Tortoise (Indotestudo travancorica) In Anamalai Hills, Western Ghats”, thesis PhD, Saurashtra University http://etheses.saurashtrauniversity.edu/id/eprint/590 Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Saurashtra University Theses Service http://etheses.saurashtrauniversity.edu [email protected] © The Author ECOLOGY AND BEHAVIOUR OF TRAVANCORE TORTOISE (Indotestudo travancorica) IN ANAMALAI HILLS, WESTERN GHATS Thesis submitted to WILDLIFE SCIENCE, FACULTY OF BIOSCIENCE SAURASHTRA UNIVERSITY Rajkot, Gujarat FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN WILDLIFE SCIENCE BY V. DEEPAK WILDLIFE INSTITUTE OF INDIA P.O. BOX # 18, DEHRADUN – 248001 UTTARANCHAL, INDIA DECEMBER 2011 Acknowledgement First, I have to thank my principal investigators Dr. K. Vasudevan and Dr. B. Pandav for giving me the opportunity to work in this project. In particular, I am very grateful to Dr. K. Vasudevan my PhD supervisor for everything he has done for me in past several years. He had been incredibly patient and generous with his time, I had learned a great deal from him while working in this project. I also thank him for sharing I. forsteni photograph. Secondly, I thank Mr. A. Silamban, Mr. S. Rajamani, Mr. Paawar, Mr. Karupasamy, Mr. Ramesh, L/O Mr. Rajan and Mr. Selvaraj for their patience, support and relentless field work and their hilarious sense of humor which made me feel I am home. Apart from them my due thanks are to Mr. Ganesan, Mr. Rajan, Mr. Kannadas, Mr. Murugadoss, Mr. Anand, Mr. Shridharan, Mr. Sekar, Mr. Gopi, Mr. Sasi, Mr. Joseph, Mr. Srinivas and other local residents who helped me find tortoises, whose number will outnumber the number of tortoises found during this study. I have to thank my neighbors at Topslip Mr. Unnikrishnan & family, Mr. Rajan & family, Mrs. Thangamani & family, Mr. Saravanan & family, Mr. Sampath for their time to time domestic help and logistic during my stay at Topslip. I greatly appreciate all the help and support I received from the staff at Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR) and Parambikulam Tiger Reserve (PTR). Especially field staff Mr. Sekaran, Mr. Kunjumani, Mr. Murugan, Mr. Balan, Mr. Devadass, Mr. Chinnathami, Mr. Manikandan, Mr. Sabu, Mr. Sivadas, Mr. Kaliappan. Drivers Mr. Manikandan and Mr. Ravi. Mr. Harikrishanan, Mr. Sanath, Mr. Santhosh Mr. Kumar, Mr. Jose Mathew and Mr. Pradeep, RFO’s, PTR, Mr. Murthy and Mr. Thangaraj Paneerselvam, RFO’s, ATR and Mr. Sanjayan Kumar, Mr. Sharwan Kumar, Mr. Vijayanand DFO’s, PTR, Mr. Varadharajan , Mr. Baswa Raju, DFO’s ATR. My special thanks are to the people of Nature conservation foundation, Rainforest research station. Especially Dr. Shankar Raman, Dr. Divya Mudappa and Mr. Anand Kumar who had been helpful during various stages during this project. Mr. Rohit Naniwadekar, Mr. Hari Shridhar, Mr. Vena Kapoor, Mr. Manish Chandi, Ms. Swati Sidhu, Ms. Eleni Foui, Ms. Deena Nisthar and Mr. P. Jaganathan researchers at NCF for their support during my stay at NCF, Valparai. Mr. Sathish driver at NCF, Valparai for his help. Ms. Poornima, Forest Research Institute for her support during the initial stages of the survey. Mr. Sandeep Varma volunteered in the final stages of surveys was of great help. At the wildlife Institute I would like to thank Dr. K. Sankar research coordinator encouraged me from the initial stages since I joined WII. I thank Mr. Qamar Qureshi for allowing me to use GIS lab facilities. Dr. Barry Noon was an invaluable resource person I had during my data analyses, his critical comments helped me learn and incorporate various components to my thesis. Mr. A. Pragatheesh was of great help while printing the thesis. Mr. C. Gyanesh helped me a lot with the paper work right from the beginning since I joined the Institute. Herbarium section at WII especially Mr. Babu was very helpful identifying plants. Laboratory section Mr. Vinod Takur for help in identification of mammal hair and for the facilities in the Lab. Mr. J. S. Kathayat from the IT, RS and GIS cell for providing details on the PAs. Mr. Virendra Sharma from the DTP section for his help in printing. Mr.Y. Srinivas for lending his laptop during the final stages of thesis writing. My interactions and discussions with Mr. S. Dutta, Mr. B. Shanthanu, Mr. S. Harikrishnan, Mr. N. B. Kar, Mr. G. Prudhvi Raj, Mr. A. Harihar, Mr. S. Sengupta, and Mr. B.Yumnan at WII and Mr. Varun Varma from National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore helped me shape my thoughts and completion of the work. Dr. Indraneil Das from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak helped me with literatures and reviewed the distribution map. Dr. Peter Paul van Dijk at the Conservation International, Mr. Abijhit Das from Aaranyak, Mr. Santhan Babu from Kerala Forest Research Institute helped me with literatures. Mr. Abijhit Das for sharing photographs of I. elongata. Mr. Nikhil Whitaker from Madras Crocodile Bank, helped me with literatures and shared information on captive tortoises. I thank Mr. J. T. Wangyal from the Royal University of Bhutan, Mr. M. K. Suwal from CARON foundation in Nepal for providing locality records for the elongated tortoise. Dr. Maren Huck from Mammal research institute in Polish Academy of Sciences and Dr. John Davison from University of Tartu helped me with home range scripts in R. Dr. James O. Juvik from University of Hawaii for providing automated weather station for the study. Dr. Peter Praschag, turtle biologist, Austria for his inputs in field. Dr. Ramachandran from Kongu Arts & Science college, Coimbatore for identification of plants. My family members mom (V. Shanthi), brother (V. Guru Prakash) & sister (V. Aishwarya) and friends S. Keerthy, G. Jagannathan, R. Arumugam, Mr & Mrs. Mukund, N. Swapna and E. Foui for their persistent support during my thesis writing. I thank the MOEF grant-in-aid research project for logistics, infrastructure and financial support for this study. I thank The Kumble Foundation, Bangalore and the Doris Norden Herpetological fund provided by the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust for their financial support during thesis write up. (V. Deepak) CONTENTS Acknowledgement Table of contents I- VI List of figures VII-VIII List of tables IX-X List of appendix XI Abstract i - iii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1-14 1.1. Freshwater turtles and tortoises of India 1 1.2. Genus “ Indotestudo” distribution and natural history 1-8 1.2.1. Travancore tortoise (Indotestudo travancorica) 5-6 1.2.2. Description of the species 6-8 1.3. Population monitoring 8 1.4. Feeding ecology 10-11 1.5. Spatial and temporal ecology 11-12 1.6. Thermoregulation 12 1.7. Conservation Action Plan 12 I 1.8. Objectives 12-13 1.9. Organization of Thesis 13-14 CHAPTER 2. STUDY AREA 15-32 2.1. Introduction 15 2.2. Location 15 2.3. Area 17 2.4. Etymology 17 2.5. Land use and conservation history 17-20 2.6. Abiotic attributes 20-23 2.6.1. Topography 20 2.6.2. Hydrology 20-21 2.6.3. Climate 23 2.7. Ecological attributes 25-32 2.7.1. Vegetation types 25 2.7.2. Faunal Diversity 25-28 2.7.3. Human habitation and forest dwellers 28-32 CHAPTER 3. POPULATION MONITORING 33-60 3.1. Introduction 33-37 II 3.2. Intensive study area 37 3.3. Methods 38-47 3.3.1. Field sampling 38-39 3.3.2. Covariates 41-44 3.3.3. Occupancy modelling 44-45 3.3.4. Model selection and goodness of fit 45-46 3.3.5. Layers and software 46-47 3.4. Results 47-54 3.4.1. Presence – absence surveys 47-48 3.4.2. Detection probability & Occupancy 49-52 3.4.3. Model averaged estimates 54 3.5. Discussion 55-60 3.5.1. Presence – absence surveys 55 3.5.2. Detection probability 55-57 3.5.3. Occupancy 57-58 3.5.4. Model averaging 59 3.5.5. Conservation implication 59-60 CHAPTER 4. FEEDING ECOLOGY 61-72 III 4.1. Introduction 61-62 4.2. Methods 62-63 4.3. Results 63-65 4.4. Discussion 67-72 CHAPTER 5. HOME RANGE, MOVEMENT AND MICROHABITAT USE 73-112 5.1. Introduction 73-77 5.2. Study area 77-78 5.3. Methods 78-89 5.3.1. Radio telemetry 78-79 5.3.2. Home range 79-82 5.3.3. Spatial movement pattern 82-86 5.3.4. Temporal activity pattern 86-89 5.3.5. Microhabitat use 89 5.4. Results 89-103 5.4.1. Radio telemetry 89-90 5.4.2. Home range 90-92 5.4.3. Spatial movement pattern 92-95 5.4.4. Temporal activity pattern 97-102 IV 5.4.5. Microhabitat use 102-103 5.4. Discussion 105-112 5.5.1. Home range 105-107 5.5.3. Spatial movement pattern 107-110 5.5.4. Temporal activity pattern 110-111 5.5.5. Microhabitat use 111-112 CHAPTER 6. CONSERVATION ACTION PLAN 113-130 6.1. Introduction 113-114 6.2. Biological assessment 114-121 6.2.1. Systematic Classification & Taxonomy 114-116 6.2.2.