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Flowering Plants of Chikodi Hills Belagavi, Karnataka, India

Academic Paper, 2021

39 Pages

Sidanand Kambhar (Author)

Excerpt

Introduction

Materials and Methods
Study area
Specimen collection and identification

Results and discussion
Families, genera and species diversity
Growth habit
Endemic taxa
New records

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

References

Appendix

FLOWERING PLANTS OF CHIKODI HILLS BELAGAVI, KARNATAKA, INDIA; A CHECKLIST

SIDANAND V. KAMBHAR1,5

Abstract

A Chikodi hill is located in North Western part of Belagavi District of Karnataka state, India, maintaining great plant diversity. Little attention to plant diversity studies has been made to it in the past years. Here, we present a checklist of the flowering plants of this region obtained through intensive field investigations and matching of herbarium specimens. In total, 584 species, including 24 endemic species are documented, belonging to 95 families and 383 genera. The native ranges, habit, habitat, flowering and fruiting and voucher specimens of taxon have been recorded in this checklist. It is the first exhaustive inventory of the flowering plants in Chikodi hills which is a significant regional centre for plant diversity.

Key words: Checklist, Chikodi hills, diversity, endemism

One liner: The regional plant species composition will help to understand geographic, climatic and socio-economic characteristics of the region.

Introduction

India is one of the mega-diversity countries along with Australia, Brazil, China, Columbia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru and Zaire which holds together about 70 percent of its total flowering plants diversity (Mc Neely et al. 1990). The richness of biodiversity is chiefly due to a diverse abiotic and biotic environment. Geographically, India is covering about 329 million ha of land and its coastline stretches to over 7,000 km, which constitutes all kinds of climate from hot arid in Thar Desert to arctic in the Himalaya with all intermediate gradations occur here. Hence India can be divided into eight distinct-floristic-regions, namely, the western Himalayas, the eastern Himalayas, Assam, the Indus plain, the Ganga plain, the Deccan, Malabar and the Andamans (Research Reference and Training Division 2010).

There is a global attention for evaluating the status of living organisms belonging to various groups and conserving their diversity. All life is depending upon the genetic code; all forms have life evolved by natural selection and all life is connected to each other. There is no exact estimation regarding the total number of species in the world, although the sum of recorded number exceeds 1.7 million (Heywood et al. 1997). Among the different organisms, the plants are the important source for the conversion of solar energy and it act as suppliers of food, oxygen and a host of many more important products. Hence it is more essential to prepare comprehensive databases of plants and their constituents. The main requirements for an inventory are correct identification, nomenclature, description and its environmental status (Ayala 2009).

As stated that, India is one of the 12 centres of mega-diversity in the world and encompass of 17,500 flowering plant species. It exhibits a wealth of complex and diverse ecosystems with a great deal of variation (Venu 1998, Kotresha and Kambhar 2016). It accounts for 8% of the global biodiversity with only 2.4% of the total land area in the world (Singh et al. 2011).

We know that plants are one of the major components of biodiversity. Thus, thorough investigation of our flora has become an urgent necessity not only an essential resource for human well-being and ecological importance of biodiversity but also of accelerated genetic erosion occurring as consequence of destruction of the forest and other habitat (Manilal 1998). Inventory is a continuous process of searching and re-examining the earlier findings. Inventory only will identify the key issues of management for these precious resources that are not fixed and will certainly vary with time and space (Yadav and Sardesai 2000).

For this reason, detailed information of the known local plant species from surrounding area is essential. The aim of this paper is to provide the first comprehensive checklist of the vascular species of Chikodi hills. The information is important as it allows us to prevent or avoid the prospective chances of biodiversity loss and to plan future policy for the protection of our environment.

Materials and Methods

Study area

Chikodi taluk is situated in the North Western part of Karnataka state. The study area is located at 16o20’0"-16o38'0" N latitude and 74o18'0" - 74o48'0"E longitude. It has an average elevation of 683 meters and receives an average annual rainfall 670 mm. Agro-climatologically the study area falls under Northern transitional zone of Karnataka state. The taluk has an area of 1263 sq. km. and is situated amidst hills and Chikodi taluk from North and West is bound by Kolhapur district of Maharashtra State, on Eastern side bound by Athani, Raibag and Gokak taluk and in Southern part Hukkeri taluk of Karnataka. The river system of the taluk consists of Krishna and its tributaries like Vedaganga, Dudhaganga and Panchaganga (Santosh et al. 2019).

Specimen collection and identification

The plant specimens were collected throughout the study area, between September 2018 and March 2021. A collection team used combination of general walk-over survey method (Filgueiras et al. 1994) and a plotless landscape defined sampling methods for plant specimen collection were made in the study area and sight observations were noted in the field notebook, such as habit, habitat, colour of flower and local names (Hall and Swaine 1981). Plant specimens bearing flower or fruit were collected and identified. All the specimens were pressed by following dry method (Rao and Sharma 1990). The voucher specimens were deposited in the Herbarium Post Graduate Department of Studies in Botany, Basavaprabhu Kore College, Chikodi. Standard literatures were used for plant identification (Cooke 1958, Bor 1960, Blatter and McCann 1984, Saldanha, 1984, Sharma et al. 1984, Saldanha 1996, Yadav and Sardesai, 2000, Prasad and Singh 2002).

Problematic and notable species were identified by direct comparison with identified specimens deposited in BSI and CAL, and digital herbaria such as Herbarium JCB (accessed on 1st February 2021), Kew Herbarium Catalogue (accessed on 1st February 2021), The nomenclature of plant species collected was updated using IPNI (The International Plant Name Index accessed on 1st February, 2021), Plants of the world online (plantsoftheworldonline.org, accessed on 1st March, 2021) and The Plant List (www.theplantlist.org, accessed on 1st January, 2021). A comprehensive checklist of the flowering taxa of the Chikodi hills is enumerated below. The families of angiosperms are organised based on the APG IV system (APG IV 2016).

Results and discussion

Families, genera and species diversity

The current checklist contains a total of 584 species belonging to 95 families and 383 genera that are indigenous, naturalised or introduced to Chikodi hills, Belagavi, Karnataka. The checklist of species is shown along with native ranges, habit, habitat, flowering and fruiting and Collection number in Table 1. A total 584 species are distributed under the 10 clades. The clade Rosids are represented by 330 species belonging to 36 families; Asterids with 195 species belonging to 23 families; Monocots are represented by 103 species belonging to 15 families. This is followed by Superasterids with 42 species belongs to 12 families. Three clades represented with one species and one family; they are probable sister of eudicots, Superrosids and ANA clade.

Of the 95 families found, the first ten families constitute 333 species (57%). The top 10 species-rich families are Fabaceae Lindl. (51 genera/89 species), Poaceae Barnhart (37/58), Asteraceae Bercht. & J.Presl (34/34), Malvaceae Juss. (13/30), Apocynaceae Juss. (21/26), Euphorbiaceae Juss. (7/22), Convolvulaceae Juss. (9/20), Acanthaceae Juss. (11/20), Lamiaceae Martinov (13/20) and Cyperaceae Juss. (6/15) (Table 2). Most of these families have a large number of herbs, resulting in their dominance. The dominance of Fabaceae may be due to the nitrogen-fixing bacteria with which these taxa often are associated, allowing these species to improve their soils (Kambhar and Kotresha 2011).

Ten most species-rich genera are Euphorbia (11, Euphorbiaceae Juss.), Ipomoea, (10, Convolvulaceae Juss.), Cyperus (9, Cyperaceae Juss.), Indigofera (8, Fabaceae Lindl.), Alysicarpus (6, Fabaceae Lindl.), Crotalaria (6, Fabaceae Lindl.), Eragrostis (6, Poaceae Barnhart), Ficus (6, Moraceae Gaudich.), Phyllanthus (6, Phyllanthaceae Martinov), and Solanum (6, Solanaceae Juss.) (Table 3).

Growth habit

Analysis of the habit shows that herbs predominate with 350 species (60%) followed by trees with 95 species (16%), shrubs with 73 species (12%), climbers with 56 species (10%) and aquatic herbs and parasitic herbs contributed with only one percent with only five species each (Table 4). The herbs have short life span and achieve their physiological maturity soon and produce progeny in couple of months, but in the case of trees and shurbs, they need a long time to mature. Furthermore, the herbs have greater tolerance to adverse conditions could result in the preponderance of herbs (Kambhar and Kotresha 2011). Plant species richness is usually higher in the herbaceous layer than in any other forest stratum. It is often stated that most plant biodiversity in the forest ecosystems is found in the herbaceous layer (Gilliam 2007).

Endemic taxa

There are 24 endemic plant species in the study area (Singh et al. 2015), belong to 14 families and 21 genera. It is accounting for 4% of the total species of which most are from the herbs (Table 5). The region is not well protected; it is exposed to several threats, such as over grazing and urbanization.

New records

In the recent years, researchers have found some interesting records from Chikodi area such as the overlooked species of Datura discolor Bernh. (Solanaceae) was reported from Hukkeri-Gokak road and Hukkeri-Chikodi road by Kumbhalkar and Nandikar (2017). A weed Ethulia gracilis Delile (Asteraceae) recorded for the first time from the Chikodi area by Dalavi et al. (2018). The endemic species Vigna indica T.M. Dixit et al. has been recorded from Chikodi area (Kambhar et al. 2020).

Conclusion

According to checklist results, it is understood that, the Chikodi hills have not been explored previously. The present study provides the baseline data for further studies on the conservation aspects with much emphasis on endemic plants and overall pattern of biodiversity. Hence it is recommended that, the community based forest conservation is much needed to ensure sustainable utilization of these forests.

Acknowledgements

Authors are grateful to the Principal, KLE Society’s, Basavaprabhu Kore Art’s, Science and Commerce College, Chikodi for laboratory facilities, also to Shri. Manjunath L. Hanji, Mr. Arunkumar Pujeri, Miss. Laxmi Halingali, Miss. Tejashwini Kambar, Miss. Vidya Sattigoudar and Mrs. Laxmi S. Kambhar for support with fieldwork.

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