Species Composition and Abundance Estimates of Reptiles in Selected Agroecosystems in Southern Western Ghats, India
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Journal of Threatened Taxa Building evidence for conservaton globally www.threatenedtaxa.org ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) Communication Species composition and abundance estimates of reptiles in selected agroecosystems in southern Western Ghats, India Abhirami Mini Jayakumar & Paingamadathil Ommer Nameer 26 September 2018 | Vol. 10 | No. 10 | Pages: 12328–12336 10.11609/jot.3652.10.10.12328-12336 For Focus, Scope, Aims, Policies and Guidelines visit htp://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/editorialPolicies#custom-0 For Artcle Submission Guidelines visit htp://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions For Policies against Scientfc Misconduct visit htp://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/editorialPolicies#custom-2 For reprints contact <[email protected]> Publisher & Host Partners Member Threatened Taxa Reptles in agroecosystems in southernJournal Western of Threatened Ghats Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 September 2018 | 10(10):Jayakumar 12328–12336 & Nameer Species composition and abundance estimates of reptiles in Communication selected agroecosystems in southern Western Ghats, India ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) Abhirami Mini Jayakumar 1 & Paingamadathil Ommer Nameer 2 ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) 1,2 Centre for Wildlife Studies, College of Forestry, Kerala Agricultural University, Thrissur, Kerala 680656, India 1 2 OPEN ACCESS [email protected], [email protected] (corresponding author) Abstract: Species compositon and abundance of reptles in selected agroecosystems in Thrissur plains, near Palghat Gap, southern Western Ghats in India, was studied from January 2017 to May 2017. The agroecosystems surveyed were coconut, cashew & rubber plantatons, home garden, paddy feld, and botanical garden. Time-constrained visual encounter surveys of a total efort of 360 man-hours were done in the feld. Coconut and cashew plantatons reported the highest species richness with 11 species each, while the highest number of sightngs (159) were recorded from botanical garden. Bronze Grass Skink Eutropis macularia was the most abundant species in agroecosystems. Correspondence analysis was done to compare the reptlian diversity in the agroecosystems. The reptle fauna of home garden and paddy feld were found to be more distnct than the rest of the agroecosystems. A total of 17 species of reptles were recorded during the study, thus highlightng the signifcance of agroecosystems in actng as important bufer landscapes for reptles. Keywords: Cashew plantaton, coconut plantaton, botanical garden, home garden, Important Bird Area, Kole wetlands, paddy feld, Ramsar site, rubber plantaton. Malayalam Abstract DOI: htps://doi.org/10.11609/jot.3652.10.10.12328-12336 | ZooBank: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:860DCCC7-66AB-4A46-A362-5EC56D844488 Editor: Pritpal S. Soorae, Environment Agency Abu Dhabii, United Arab Emirates. Date of publicaton: 26 September 2018 (online & print) Manuscript details: Ms # 3652 | Received 14 July 2017 | Final received 02 August 2018 | Finally accepted 12 September 2018 Citaton: Jayakumar, A.M. & P.O. Nameer (2018). Species compositon and abundance estmates of reptles in selected agroecosystems in southern Western Ghats, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 10(10): 12328–12336; htps://doi.org/10.11609/jot.3652.10.10.12328-12336 Copyright: © Jayakumar & Nameer 2018. Creatve Commons Atributon 4.0 Internatonal License. JoTT allows unrestricted use of this artcle in any medium, repro- ducton and distributon by providing adequate credit to the authors and the source of publicaton. Funding: Kerala Agricultural University. Competng interests: The authors declare no competng interests. Author Details: Abhirami M. Jayakumar is a PG research scholar, whose interest include taxonomy and ecology of reptles of Western Ghats. P.O. Nameer is a Professor and his research interest include the taxonomy, biogeography and ecology of the vertebrates except fshes. Author Contributon: Both the authors contributed equally to the design of the study, feld work, morphometric data collecton, analysis and manuscript preparaton. Acknowledgements: We thank Neelesh Dahanukar, IISER, Pune for his assistance with data analysis. Abhin M. Sunil, Bharath M. R., Habeel Sahal, Nibin Antony K., Francis Scaria, Al Ameen A., Sreekumar E. R., Prajeesh P., Syamili M. S., Dilgith Surendran and Amal U. S. assisted us with the feld work. The Dean, College of Forestry, Kerala Agricultural University is acknowledged for the encouragement and support. We also thank the anonymous reviewers and the Subject Editor for their critcal comments. 12328 Reptles in agroecosystems in southern Western Ghats Jayakumar & Nameer INTRODUCTION sustaining reptle biodiversity, partcularly that of habitat specialists and endemic species. Nearly two-thirds of the terrestrial environment of the world is made up of managed ecosystems with natural, undisturbed habitats accountng for only a STUDY AREA meagre fve percentage. These managed ecosystems include agricultural systems, forestry systems, and The study was conducted in selected agroecosystems human setlements (Gamage et al. 2008). Herpetofauna in Thrissur District, southern Western Ghats, Kerala makes up 48% of the terrestrial vertebrates that are (10.53–10.550N & 76.27–76.280E, 20–70 m). The threatened by agroforestry and forestry actvites agroecosystems chosen included cashew, coconut & (Palacios et al. 2013). rubber plantatons, home garden, paddy feld, and Despite the fact that herpetofauna makes up half of botanical garden (Fig. 1). The study area chosen mostly vertebrate species, they are very much understudied in comes within the main campus of Kerala Agricultural their response to change in habitats from natural forests University in Kerala. The campus has a total area of to plantatons. The review done by Palacios et al. (2013) 391.44ha and is located very close to Peechi-Vazhani on the herpetofauna of agroecosystems on a global Wildlife Sanctuary. The major habitats include gardens, scale found just 27 studies pertaining to amphibians botanical gardens, plantatons of rubber, coconut, and reptles. Very few studies on the reptlian diversity plantain & cocoa, and orchards of mango, jackfruit, of agroecosystems have been done in southern India sapota & guava. The whole area must have been under too. Perhaps the only study on the reptles of human- forests about one and a half centuries ago and was modifed habitats is the one by Venugopal (2010), who subsequently converted mostly into rubber plantatons. studied the agamids of human-modifed habitats in the Later, in 1971, the land was handed over to the Kerala Western Ghats. Agricultural University (KAU), and the KAU developed In a tme when more and more forest areas are these areas into diferent land uses as explained above. being converted into plantatons and agricultural lands The 14-year mean minimum temperature is 23.30C and for meetng the growing needs of human populatons, the 10-year mean maximum is 31.90C. The area receives it is important to evaluate the reptle diversity in these southwest and northeast monsoons, the greater porton modifed ecosystems. It is important to assess whether of the rainfall, however, is received from the southwest these agroecosystems are capable of supportng and monsoon between June and September. The mean Figure 1. Locaton map of diferent study locatons, Thrissur Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 September 2018 | 10(10): 12328–12336 12329 Reptles in agroecosystems in southern Western Ghats Jayakumar & Nameer annual rainfall is 2803.4mm. The mean number of (CCA), a multvariate constrained ordinaton technique rainy days per year is 112 (Manohar et al. 2017). The (Legendre & Legendre 1998). A triplot of observatons paddy feld selected was located at the Kole Wetlands in grouped for plantaton types, species, and eigenvectors central Kerala, which incidentally is a Ramsar site and an of environmental variables was ploted to understand Important Bird Area (IBA) (Islam & Rahmani 2004, 2008). the species distributon along the plantaton types and environmental variables. A scree plot of eigenvalues and cumulatve inerta explained by each canonical axes METHODS was ploted to understand the contributon of each axes. The signifcance of the canonical axes was tested using The method followed was tme-constrained visual permutatons test (Legendre et al. 2011). Statstcal encounter survey of a two-hour duraton in each of the analysis was performed in PAST 3.19 (Hammer et al. agroecosystems in the morning (08:00–10:00 hr) and 2001). evening (19:00–21:00 hr). Each locaton was covered on foot and whenever a species was sighted, observatons such as the name of the species, the number of sightngs, RESULTS AND DISCUSSION tme, and GPS locaton were recorded following Ishwar et al. (2001). At each agroecosystem, the survey was A total of 594 sightngs of 17 species (Table 1) was carried out for fve days. Thus, the total efort spent encountered from the agroecosystems during the study during the entre course of the