Streamside amphibian communities in plantations and a rainforest fragment in the Anamalai hills, India

Ranjini Murali,T.R Shankar Raman

doi:10.11609/jott.o2829.2849-56

Abstract

Stream amphibian communities, occupying a sensitive environment, are often useful indicators of effects of adjoining land uses. We compared abundance and community composition of anuran amphibians along streams in tea monoculture, shade coffee plantation, and a rainforest fragment in Old Valparai area of the Anamalai hills. Overall species density and rarefaction species richness was the highest in rainforest fragment and did not vary between the coffee and tea land uses. Densities of certain taxa, and consequently community composition, varied significantly among the land uses, being greater between rainforest fragment and tea monoculture with shade coffee being intermediate. Observed changes are probably related to streamside alteration due to land use, suggesting the need to retain shade tree cover and remnant riparian rainforest vegetation as buffers along streams.

Highlights

Habitat alteration, fragmentation, and destruction are the greatest threats to biodiversity worldwide (Vitousek et al 1997), especially in tropical zones where diversity is high and forests are being transformed at a rapid rate (Pineda & Halffter 2004)
We extend this work to a fragmented landscape in the Anamalai hills where we compare the occurrence, abundance, and species composition of anurans along streams in three land uses: monoculture tea plantation, shade coffee plantation, and rainforest fragment
We recorded 413 individuals belonging to 10 different anuran amphibian taxa from the three different land uses: 149 individuals from coffee, 142 from rainforest fragment, and 122 from tea plantation (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Fragmentation, and destruction are the greatest threats to biodiversity worldwide (Vitousek et al 1997), especially in tropical zones where diversity is high and forests are being transformed at a rapid rate (Pineda & Halffter 2004). The negative effects of these threats include decreased species richness and abundance, changes in species composition, and loss of genetic diversity (Saunders et al 1991; Turner 1996; Laurance et al 2002; Bell & Donnelly 2006). Streams and stream-dependent organisms are sensitive and most likely to be affected by such changes in land use (Welsh & Ollivier 1998; Sreekantha et al 2007; Gururaja et al 2008), especially in plantations where they are susceptible to agro-chemical drift, erosion and run-off (Logan 1993). Amphibians are good biological indicators of stream quality for several reasons. They usually have a bi-phasic life cycle with

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