Plant Functional Types and Plant Trait Measurements in the Eastern Ghats, South India

Abstract

AbstractClassifying terrestrial plant species on the basis of function rather than on taxonomy facilitates addressing ecological questions at the scale of ecosystems, landscapes or Biomes. The concept of plant functional types (PFTs) helps handle taxonomic diversity, as it groups together species that share common attributes with respect to, e.g. life-form, phenology and bioclimatic limits. For some time now, large international efforts promoted by the IGBP-GCTE programme are underway to measure for a large number of species a shortlist of significant plant traits that would underlie such functional plant classification systems. The idea here is to help address vegetation responses to and vegetation effects on environmental changes such as climate changes, but also others such as landuse or other disturbances.A PFT classification obviously helps in the use of pollen assemblages to infer past ecosystem changes, especially ecosystem response to climate change, as this is more directly linked to changes in functional rather than taxonomic diversity of plants over temporal and spatial gradients. We present a comprehensive list of pollen taxa from our database of surface samples from Eastern Ghats, South India to which PFTs are assigned based on our field observations of the Ecology and Biology of individuals as well as the description of the flora and vegetation of the Eastern Ghats in standard published floras. Finally, we also present trait measurements such as specific leaf area (SLA) and thickness for a shortlist of the taxa listed above.