Drivers of plant diversity in a semi-arid tropical city
My collaborator Anjali Bhadule and I tested the effect of four key factors--annual income, house age, education of family members and type of water sources--on plant diversity of urban yards in Solapur, India. Additionally, we also examined how the species pool of local nurseries affect plant diversity in urban yards. Anjali spent most of the 2020 spring sampling a total of 115 yards spread across 24 blocks in the city documenting woody plants, and of course, drinking a cup of tea at most of the houses! The results were very exciting! We found that having a bore well as the water source significantly increased yard diversity, and house age also weakly predicted yard plant diversity. For Solapur, it seems that the species pool of urban yards is almost entirely the same as the one offered by local nurseries. |
|
The Fergusson College Long-term Vegetation Monitoring:
Global long-term ecological research has largely focused on forested natural landscapes over urbanized centers. There is substantial evidence today to infer that Indian urban areas house significant biodiversity. As of now, we have a fair deal of baseline documentation of the patterns of biodiversity for various taxa across various Indian cities (eg. Bengaluru). However, we still do not know a lot about the long term biodiversity dynamics within Indian cities. With this backdrop, we have set up India's first long-term urban vegetation monitoring program for the Fergusson College campus in the Pune city. Check out the article introducing this initiative here!
Previous documentation:
Documenting Fergusson campus flora and fauna:
Flora:
Fergusson’s campus is a treasure trove for anybody interested in studying plants. As botany students, this fascinated us so much so, that we decided to survey the entire campus and come up with a checklist of all the plants present at Fergusson. One advantage that we had in this initiative was the availability of past records of plants from the campus in form of published literature as well as herbarium records. The campus of this institute has seen a great deal of changes over the past several years of its existence; and hence, we were also interested in comparing our findings with previous records. Our team had worked on documenting the campus flora from 2011-14 and it was exciting to find over 812 species of plants recorded in the campus till date. Out of these, about 534 were present till 2014. Several of these plants are locally rare and of botanical value for example the Mexican tree (Acacia greggii)- a new record for Maharashtra state-.
A detailed article of this study can be found here.
Fauna:
Who wold believe that a college campus in the heart of a city can be home to over 90 species of spiders, 93 butterflies, 26 reptiles, 5 amphibians, 137 birds, 19 mammals! And wait, we are not even counting bugs, beetles, dragonflies, and many microscopic organisms and yet, the numbers are simply overwhelming.
Several unique and rare records also came up during our investigation. One of them was the discovery of a small population of a gecko: Cnemaspis mysoriensis. This gecko was not reported earlier in the city and may also have been introduced. Past records came as a surprise to us: The Four horned-antelope and Striped Hyaena were present till 1970s on the hillside and Red headed and Egyptian vultures were seen soaring above main building till as recent as 2004. A straggler Vernal-hanging parrot was recorded once and even an injured Pitta which was rescued from the campus!.
Flora:
Fergusson’s campus is a treasure trove for anybody interested in studying plants. As botany students, this fascinated us so much so, that we decided to survey the entire campus and come up with a checklist of all the plants present at Fergusson. One advantage that we had in this initiative was the availability of past records of plants from the campus in form of published literature as well as herbarium records. The campus of this institute has seen a great deal of changes over the past several years of its existence; and hence, we were also interested in comparing our findings with previous records. Our team had worked on documenting the campus flora from 2011-14 and it was exciting to find over 812 species of plants recorded in the campus till date. Out of these, about 534 were present till 2014. Several of these plants are locally rare and of botanical value for example the Mexican tree (Acacia greggii)- a new record for Maharashtra state-.
A detailed article of this study can be found here.
Fauna:
Who wold believe that a college campus in the heart of a city can be home to over 90 species of spiders, 93 butterflies, 26 reptiles, 5 amphibians, 137 birds, 19 mammals! And wait, we are not even counting bugs, beetles, dragonflies, and many microscopic organisms and yet, the numbers are simply overwhelming.
Several unique and rare records also came up during our investigation. One of them was the discovery of a small population of a gecko: Cnemaspis mysoriensis. This gecko was not reported earlier in the city and may also have been introduced. Past records came as a surprise to us: The Four horned-antelope and Striped Hyaena were present till 1970s on the hillside and Red headed and Egyptian vultures were seen soaring above main building till as recent as 2004. A straggler Vernal-hanging parrot was recorded once and even an injured Pitta which was rescued from the campus!.