Taxonomic And Ecological Database Of Trees Of Western Ghats - Treeghatsdata

The World Flora Online (WFO) is the collaborative, international initiative to achieve Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC): "An online flora of all known plants." WFO provides an open-access, web-based compendium of the world’s plant species, which builds upon existing knowledge and published floras, checklists and revisions but will also require the collection and generation of new information on poorly known groups and unexplored regions (Borsch et al. 2020). The construction of the WFO Taxonomic Backbone is central to the entire WFO as it determines the accessibility of additional content data and at the same time, represents a taxonomic opinion on the circumscription of those taxa. The Plant List v.1.1 (TPL 2013) was the starting point for the backbone, as this was the most comprehensive resource covering all plants available. We have since curated the higher taxonomy of the backbone, based on the following published community-derived classifications: the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG IV 2016), the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group (PPG I 2016), Bryophytes (Buck et al. 2008), and Hornworts & Liverworts (Söderström et al. 2016). The WFO presents a community-supported consensus classification with the aim of being the authoritative global source of information on the world's plant diversity. The backbone is actively curated by our Taxonomic Expert Networks (TEN), consisting of specialists of taxonomic groups, ideally at the Family or Order level. There are currently 37 approved TENs, involving more than 280 specialists, working with the WFO. There are small TENs like the Begonia Resource Center and the Meconopsis Group (with five specialists), medium TENs like Ericaceae and Zingiberaceae Resource Centers or SolanaceaSource.org (around 15 experts), and larger TENs like Caryophyllales.org and the Legume Phylogeny Working Group, with more than 80 specialists involved. When we do not have taxonomic oversight, the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP 2019) has been used to update those families from the TPL 2013 classification. Full credit and acknowledgement given to the original sources is a key requirement of this collaborative project, allowing users to refer to the primary data. For example, an association with the original content is kept through the local identifiers used by the taxonomic content providers as a link to their own resources. A key requirement for the WFO Taxonomic Backbone is that every name should have a globally unique identifier that is maintained, ideally forever. After considering several options, the WFO Technology Working Group recommended that the WFO Council establish a WFO Identifier (WFO-ID), a 10-digit number with a “wfo-” prefix, aimed at establishing a resolvable identifier for all existing plant names, which will not only be used in the context of WFO but can be universally used to reference plant names. Management of the WFO Taxonomic Backbone has been a challenge as TPL v1.1 was derived from multiple taxonomic datasets, which led to duplication of records. For that reason, names can be excluded from the public portal by the WFO Taxonomic Working Group or the TENs, but not deleted. A WFO-ID is not deleted nor reused after it has been excluded from the WFO Taxonomic Backbone. Keeping these allows for better matching when assigning WFO-IDs to data derived from content providers. Nevertheless, this implies certain considerations for new names and duplications. New names are added to the WFO Taxonomic Backbone via nomenclators like the International Plants Name Index (IPNI, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew et al. 2021) for Angiosperms, and Tropicos (Missouri Botanical Garden 2021) for Bryophytes, as well as harvesting endemic and infraspecific names from Flora providers when providing descriptive content. New names are passed to the TEN to make a judgement on their taxonomic status. When TENs provide a new authoritative taxonomic list for their group, we first produce a Name Matching report to ensure no names are missed. Several issues come from managing and maintaining taxonomic lists, but the process of curating an ever-growing integrated resource leads to an increase in the challenges we face with homonyms, non-standard author abbreviations, orthographic variants and duplicate names when Name Matching. The eMonocot database application, provided by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, (Santarsiero et al. 2013) and subsequently adapted by the Missouri Botanical Garden to provide the underlying functionality for WFO's current toolset, has also proven itself to be a challenging component to update. In this presentation, we will share our hands-on experience, technical solutions and workflows creating and maintaining the WFO Taxonomic Backbone.

Fil: Moroni, Pablo Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Instituto de Botanica Darwinion. Academia Nacional de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales. Instituto de Botanica Darwinion; Argentina

The study of ethno botanical was carried out along with the ethnic groups (Villupuram district) in the South Western Ghats of India. In the present study, 46 plant species belonging to 31 families were included. In this assertion, the information collected from the traditional healers was used to compare with the already accessible literature on the ethnobotany of India. The conventional ethno medicinal plants were mostly used for fever, dysentery, skin diseases, poison bites, wounds, piles and rheumatism. The medicinal plants used by traditional users of Villupuram district are arranged alphabetically followed by botanical name, family name, local name and major chemical constituents, parts used, mode of preparation and medicinal uses. Key words: Medicinal plants, traditional healers, chemical constituents

The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) started with ordinal relationships for angiosperm families and later came to concentrate more on issues surrounding family delimitation, generally taking a conservative approach (favouring lumping over splitting when choices were otherwise fairly evenly balanced). The history of the APG approach to classification is elaborated here, and long-term trends in taxon size are also discussed. Twenty-three questions relating to family delimitation of angiosperms (21) and ferns (two) were identified, and an open, web-based survey was conducted to determine which solutions were preferred by the botanical community. There were a total of 441 responses from 42 countries. The full survey results are presented and discussed. In general, among respondents, there was a good balance between lumping and splitting, although a much smaller percentage self-identified as splitters. Recommendations to APG for a set of specific family delimitation issues in angiosperms and ferns are made. We followed the majority vote in all but four cases and recommended ten splitting and 13 lumping options. We found that decisions were made by respondents on a case-by-case basis. Many respondents favoured lumping as a means of gaining stability by leaving circumscription issues at the lower taxonomic levels, which are of more concern to specialists (i.e. at subfamilial and tribal levels). We estimate that APG IV will not differ substantially from APG III.

Understanding the patterns and drivers of bird species composition and diversity outside Protected Area networks is essential to develop landscape-level conservation strategies. The Western Ghats' coffee plantations of India form an important agro-ecosystem and help maintain a significant portion of regional avian diversity. However, knowledge of the composition and functional diversity of birds in differently managed coffee plantation is lacking from the Western Ghats. In this study, we compared the composition and functional diversity of resident birds between shade and open coffees plantations. We counted 3,846 birds of 87 species, and found species richness to be higher in shade (78 species) than in open coffee plantations (55 species). Interestingly, 32 species were unique to shade and nine were unique to open coffee plantations, with 46 species found in both types of plantation. Overall species composition and functional diversity were different in differently managed plantations. Species richness and abundance (birds/point/visit) were higher in shade coffee, reflecting the availability of multiple strata and habitat heterogeneity. Results revealed that different farm management practices can affect functional bird richness and its abundance in coffee plantations. Therefore, retaining shade-trees of native varieties in coffee plantations is important for supporting high functional diversity, richness, and abundance of birds in the coffee plantation of the Western Ghats.

Fil: Freire, Susana Edith. Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Division de Plantas Vasculares; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas; Argentina

To assess water and soil quality in the Western Ghats' coffee plantations, 66 water and 224 soil samples were collected at four locations for estimation 20 parameters in water and 16 parameters in soil samples. Principal component analysis as applied to a set of chemical data obtained by the laboratory analysis of water and soil. Study locations represented arabica coffee (Coffea arabica) plantations around 50 km2 from Chikkamagaluru town. PCA showed the interrelationship of water and soil parameters for four sampling locations. The clustering of sampling location results was due to the consequence and concentration of water and soil variables. The principal component bi-plot of phosphorous, conductivity, hardness, total dissolved solids, sulphate, magnesium, and alkalinity determined water quality factors. Heavy metals, nitrogen, and total phosphorous greatly influenced the quality of soil samples at different locations.

Sustaining biodiversity conservation in human-modified landscapes in the Western Ghats: Remnant forests matter

In the highly populated and diverse tropics, conservation in relatively pristine habitats is important but clearly inadequate for sustaining the earth biological diversity. Agro-forestry systems such as shade-coffee plantations that incorporate arboreal vegetation are known to be more resilient for biodiversity conservation than other more drastic land transformations. We evaluated amphibian richness and diversity in 15 coffee plantations from three different regimes; organic coffee plantations, NPK coffee plantations and pesticide use coffee plantations in Kodagu District, Western Ghats, India. We treated five sacred groves as control region (CR) and sampled them using a combination of standardized visual and acoustic transect sampling. The sacred groves that were characterized by natural vegetation showed the highest richness and abundance of amphibians among the four regimes. In organic coffee plantations, overall abundance and richness of amphibians was significantly higher compared to NPK coffee plantations. On the other hand, amphibian richness and diversity in pesticide use coffee plantations were significantly lower compared to all other regimes. The results of the study clearly indicated that, the difference in habitat variables in coffee plantations and use of different treatments for pest control had a significant effect on the species richness and abundance of amphibians. This study highlights the great potential of sacred groves and organic coffee plantations as complementary habitat for the conservation of amphibians.

El género Quinchamalium comprende hierbas hemiparásitas y es endémico de Sudamérica. Su distribución abarca los Andes desde el norte del Perú hasta el sur de la Patagonia. Los límites morfológicos pocos claros y la escasez de caracteres diagnósticos para la correcta identificación de las especies actualmente aceptadas revelan la necesidad de una revisión de la taxonomía del género. La información morfológica y biogeográfica junto con los análisis morfométricos publicados recientemente señalan la existencia de una sola especie polimórfica: Q. chilense. Como resultado, se presenta un tratamiento taxonómico del género monoespecífico Quinchamalium. Para la única especie del género se provee nueva sinonimia, descripción de características morfológicas vegetativas y reproductivas, y distribución geográfica. En este trabajo, 28 nombres de especies o de taxones infraespecíficos son reducidos a la sinonimia de Q. chilense por primera vez. Además, se lectotipifican 13 nombres y uno se neotipifica

Virus taxonomy can be defined as the arranging of viruses into related clusters, identification of the extent of relatedness within and among these clusters, and the naming of the clusters (= taxa). The first internationally organized initiative for the naming and classification of animal, plant and microbial viruses was the formation of the International Committee on Nomenclature of Viruses in 1966. This was renamed the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) in 1973 and has since produced seven reports reviewing the state of virus taxonomy, the latest of which was published recently (Van Regenmortel et al., 2000). This brief review describes the current classification of plant viruses, outlines the principles used in virus classification and their application, and highlights the taxa created since the previous ICTV Report (Murphy et al., 1995) was published. Most plant viruses are classified in 649 species, most of which are classified among 73 genera. Forty-nine genera are classified among 15 families; the remaining 24 genera have not been assigned to a family. Some species are recognized as members of a family but have not been assigned to a particular genus; 15 other recognized distinct species of uncertain taxonomic status, designated Unassigned Species, have yet to be assigned to a genus or family. The current classification is shown in Table 1, which also shows the classification of viroids (7 genera in 2 families). As in the 7th ICTV Report (van Regenmortel et al., 2000), the families and genera are arranged according to their genome types (ssDNA, dsRNA, etc.), although this grouping has no taxonomic status. A complete listing of plant virus and viroid species then recognized, together with their recommended abbreviations, has been published in Fauquet and Mayo (1999). The main guiding principles in devising a taxonomy for viruses have been discussed in Mayo and Pringle (1998). They are: stability—that is that once decided, names and relationships should remain unaltered for as long as possible, thereby facilitating reference to older literature. Unlike other biological taxonomies, that for viruses has no Rule of Priority. That this system has functioned well is possibly due to the relatively few virus species (currently 1550 of all types) that have been described. utility—that is, the scheme of taxonomic relationships should be found to be useful by the wider virology community. To this end, ICTV decisions are taken in consultation with, and usually at the prompting of, study groups of interested virologists. Utility is usually the result of a prior demand for taxonomic order. It can be assessed by the compliance of working virologists. acceptability—that is, working virologists should be happy to use the names and taxonomic relationships listed. All decisions are susceptible to modification by succeeding taxonomic proposals. Unacceptable names and taxa are eliminated in this way. flexibility—that is that the taxonomy is amenable to revision and reassessment in the light of new discoveries. Newly recognized viruses are constantly being described, as are novel details in the genetic structures of known viruses. A useful taxonomy and nomenclature must therefore adapt to new information. The ICTV is a committee of the Virology Division of the International Union of Microbiological Societies (IUMS), which represents the interests of member microbiological societies. ICTV comprises national members nominated by countries with microbiological societies affiliated to IUMS, life members elected by ICTV, and the elected members of the Executive Committee (EC). Decisions of ICTV are made at plenary sessions of the International Virology Congresses (convened every 3 years) and by postal voting. Statutes define the constitution of ICTV, its mode of operation and how it is constituted. The current version of the Statutes is published in the 7th ICTV Report (Van Regenmortel et al., 2000). The ICTV is advised by its EC, which consists of elected officials among whom are the chairs of subcommittees that represent the major fields of virology. The Plant Virus Subcommittee has at present 21 study groups, each of which is concerned with a particular taxon or group of taxa. The groups make proposals for changes to taxonomy within their fields of interest to accommodate new information as it emerges. Proposals approved by the subcommittees are considered by the EC and, if approved, are presented to the ICTV for ratification. Proposals from outside the ICTV structure are normally referred to the appropriate study group for discussion, or failing this, to the appropriate subcommittee. The Executive Committee of the ICTV has developed an International Code of Nomenclature based on ad hoc rules (Mayo and Horzinek, 1998; Van Regenmortel et al., 2000). These present the modus operandi of the ICTV and are the justification for the decisions of the executive committee and its subcommittees. Many of the rules contained in the code are self-evident. Others, however, have been devised in response to pressures from the virology community for guidance, or even pleas for consistency, in decision-making. Some issues that have provoked comment recently are: The rules state that a new name should be distinctive (Rule 3.14), easy to remember (Rule 3.12), be free of association with any individual's name (Rule 3.11), and avoid absurdity or offence in any language (Rule 3.19). Also, names should not convey particular meaning such that some members of the taxon would seem not to belong in it (Rule 3.18). Unlike the names of species in all other biological disciplines, those of virus species are not latinized. Thus species names have no gender. The names of genera must end in '-virus' and the names of families must end in '-viridae'. Because taxa have been named in the past under less well developed rules, some in the current list have names that are in contravention of current practice. However, in the interests of the stability of nomenclature, few have been altered. All taxon names (including those of species) are written in italic script and have a capital initial letter for the first name. However, in vernacular usage the name is not used formally and italic script is not necessary. Thus, the potyvirus Tobacco etch virus is classified in genus Potyvirus and family Potyviridae. Collective names such as 'potyviruses' and 'nepoviruses' are never italicised. How the ICTV decides that particular virus isolates belong to one or another species, or are strains within a single species, has been a contentious issue (Van Regenmortel et al., 1997). The basis for decisions is the definition of a virus species that has been accepted by ICTV. It is: 'A virus species is a polythetic class of viruses that contitutes a replicating lineage and occupies a particular ecological niche' (Van Regenmortel, 1990). The current ICTV Report (Van Regenmortel et al., 2000) lists the criteria used to differentiate distinct species from virus strains. It is important to emphasize that the criteria used for demarcating species in different families can, and sometimes do, differ. This is both because families can be intrinsically different and because the criteria used are determined by virologists in different study groups. In Table 1, the taxa that were not in the previous ICTV Report (Murphy et al., 1995) are marked in bold text. The most striking novelties are that retrotransposons found in plants are now classified in two genera in two families (Pseudoviridae and Metaviridae) and that viroids have been classified in seven genera distributed among two families. The latest report also contains three new plant virus families (Luteoviridae, Caulimoviridae and Closteroviridae), 26 new genera and three renamed genera in family Geminiviridae (Mastrevirus, Curtovirus and Begomovirus). M.A.M. and A.A.B. are, respectively, Secretary of the ICTV Executive Committee and Chair of the Plant Virus Subcommittee; M.A.M. is supported by funding from the Scottish Executive Rural Affairs Department, and A.A.B. by Horticulture Research International.

Over the past four decades Western Ghats, one of the eight hottest hotspots of biological diversity in the world, has witnessed the transformation of its prime forests into other land-use types mainly monoculture plantations. The present study evaluated the impact of conversion of natural forests to mixed-species (teak) and monoculture (rubber) plantations on the soil quality of the Typic Plinthohumults soil series in the Southern Western Ghats region of Kerala, India. The baseline physicochemical and biological parameters of the different locations were analyzed using standard methods. To comprehend the impact of plantations on the overall soil quality, the soil quality index of the different land-uses was quantified using the forest as the reference land-use Significant variations in different soil physical, chemical, and biological properties of plantation and forest soils were observed in the present study. The overall soil quality index was found to follow the order: forest (1.0) > teak plantations (0.9) > rubber plantations (0.6), thus signifying the negative impact, monoculture rubber plantations had on the soil quality of the study area. The results emphasize the need for the development of better land management practices and mixed-species plantation systems such as the teak plantations in the present study which did not deteriorate the soil quality.

Western Ghats, known for its biodiversity, once well covered with dense forest, has been severely felled for cultivation of coffee, covering an area of 3.81 lakh ha and production of 3.27 lakh tonnes. To evaluate the effects of conversion from natural forests to coffee plantation on land quality, the changes in soil physical and chemical properties and soil organic carbon stock were assessed in selected hot per-humid, hot moist sub-humid and hot humid forest and coffee ecosystems of Chikmagalur district of Karnataka, Wayanad and Idukki districts of Kerala in the Western Ghats. Sixty sites were studied to understand the soil quality of which 46 sites were located in coffee plantations and 14 in forests adjacent to coffee plantations. In this study, six typifying pedons representing Chikmagalur district of Karnataka, Wayanad and Idukki districts of Kerala in the Western Ghats are explained by comparing the existing natural forest with that of coffee plantation ecosystem. The increase in soil organic carbon stocks (16.32-16.38 kg m-2 in forests to 14.32-19.28 kg m-2 in coffee system), the most reliable indicator of land quality and other soil properties like clay content, pH, exchangeable bases, CEC, available nutrients like N, P, Ca, Mg, S, Zn and Cu in the study area revealed that there was an improvement in land quality, owing to lesser disturbance and better management in coffee plantation compared to forests on its conversion which indicates the restoration of land.

The mammalian communities in coffee plantations around a protected area in the Western Ghats, India

By studying of the collection of the National Herbarium of Ukraine (KW) -the Herbarium of the M.G. Kholodny Institute of Botany of the NAS of Ukraine -we found numerous authentic materials from the genus Acer L. (Sapindaceae) that served for O.H. Radde-Fomina for describe her new taxa, and that needing the clarification of their category. As a result of study these specimens, we lectotypificated four infraspecific names of Acer campestre L.: