Abstract
Species composition and abundance of reptiles 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 plantations, home garden, paddy field, and botanical garden. Time-constrained visual encounter surveys of a total effort of 360 man-hours were done in the field. Coconut and cashew plantations reported the highest species richness with 11 species each, while the highest number of sightings (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 reptilian diversity in the agroecosystems. The reptile fauna of home garden and paddy field were found to be more distinct than the rest of the agroecosystems. A total of 17 species of reptiles were recorded during the study, thus highlighting the significance of agroecosystems in acting as important buffer landscapes for reptiles.
Highlights
Two-thirds of the terrestrial environment of the world is made up of managed ecosystems with natural, undisturbed habitats accounting for only a meagre five percentage
Very few studies on the reptilian diversity of agroecosystems have been done in southern India too
Perhaps the only study on the reptiles of humanmodified habitats is the one by Venugopal (2010), who studied the agamids of human-modified habitats in the Western Ghats
Summary
Environment Agency Abu Dhabii, United Arab Emirates. Manuscript details: Ms # 3652 | Received 14 July 2017 | Final received 02 August 2018 | accepted 12 September 2018. Jayakumar is a PG research scholar, whose interest include taxonomy and ecology of reptiles of Western Ghats. P.O. Nameer is a Professor and his research interest include the taxonomy, biogeography and ecology of the vertebrates except fishes. Author Contribution: Both the authors contributed to the design of the study, field work, morphometric data collection, analysis and manuscript preparation
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