Orchid Flora of Laos: findings from a survey of limestone karst vegetation in Vang Vieng, Vientiane Province, Laos

Pankaj Kumar Sahani,Gunter A Fischer,Stephan W Gale,André Schuiteman,Somsanith Bouamanivong

doi:10.11609/jott.2826.8.12.9397-9417

Pankaj Kumar Sahani, Gunter A Fischer + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.2826.8.12.9397-9417

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Abstract

A major project to study the phytodiversity of the Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot was initiated by Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, Hong Kong, in 2011, with the aim of surveying primary forest fragments and identifying conservation priorities within this expansive but highly threatened ecoregion. The Vang Vieng area of Vientiane Province, northern Laos, was chosen as a focus for a pilot expedition, since it features an extensive karst landscape that has barely been explored. Together with officials from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of Lao PDR, surveys of three sites were conducted in April 2012, at the end of the dry northeast monsoon season. A total of 283 herbarium specimens were collected. These collections comprised nearly 180 specimens from the family Orchidaceae, of which approximately 136 were unique taxa. At least one of these is a species new to science and a further nine represent new distributional records for Laos. A list of the species encountered during the study is presented and the significance of the findings is discussed. Major threats to the natural environment in northern Laos are highlighted.

Highlights

The identification of biodiversity hotspots is necessary for landscape-level protection of fragile ecosystems (Myers et al 2000), but this must be followed by comprehensive inventories of the species found within them for targeted action at the speciesand habitat-level
Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot The Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot (IBBH) covers an area of over 2.3 million km2 including all of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, most of Thailand and Myanmar, and parts of South China (Hainan Island, southern parts of Yunnan, Guangxi and Guangdong provinces, and Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions), northern Peninsular Malaysia, Bangladesh and northeast India (Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and parts of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Tripura and the Andaman Islands) [demarcated on the basis of shapefiles for IBBH available at CEPF website (CEPF 2016)]
The climate of Vang Vieng is influenced by the warm, wet southwest monsoon from May–October, followed by the cooler, drier northeast monsoon from November to February

Summary

Introduction

The identification of biodiversity hotspots is necessary for landscape-level protection of fragile ecosystems (Myers et al 2000), but this must be followed by comprehensive inventories of the species found within them for targeted action at the speciesand habitat-level. IBBH has the largest human population of all the world’s biodiversity hotspots, currently with over 315 million people, and this figure is projected to climb, placing intense pressure on the region’s biodiversity. It is considered one of the world’s five most threatened ecoregions (Mittermeier et al 2004; Tordoff et al 2011): today, less than 5% of its natural vegetation remains intact (Mittermeier et al 2004; Gale et al 2013). Notwithstanding the region’s ecological importance, only approximately 236,000km (~10%) of this area is currently protected (Tordoff et al 2012)

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