Cattle Egrets and dry fish business in coastal areas

Cattle Egret is one of the common wetland birds in India known for its efficiency to make use of human interfered habitats. The present study is an attempt to document maggots of houseflies and calliphorids in the coastal sun drying fish yards and the role of the species in containing the vector species. The number of flies and maggots were found related with the visit of cattle egrets, demonstrating the importance of the species in controlling the vectors

Breeding biology of pond heron in Kerala, South India

Regular intensive investigations to locate nesting colonies were carried out early monsoon of 1999 up to 2002. For detailed study a few breeding colonies were selected. The nesting trees, nest characteristics, eggs characteristics, incubation, hatching and hatchlings were investigated.

Altogether 17 plant species were used for nesting. Nest materials were collected from 24 plant species for building nest. The mean maximum size of the nest material used was 29.05 cm and the mean minimum size was 13.46 cm. The clutch size varied from 2-5 and clutches of three were very common. The maximum and minimum length and breadth of eggs were 48.0 x 32.0 and 33.3 x 24.1 respectively. The weight of eggs varied between 17.8 and 11.2 gm. Both sexes take part in incubation that extended for 18-24 days. Hatching success reached 82%. Their food consisted mainly of fishes and both parents took part in feeding the nestlings

Cattle Egrets and dry fish business in coastal areas

AbstractCattle Egret is one of the common wetland birds in India known for its efficiency to make use of human interfered habitats. The present study is an attempt to document maggots of houseflies and calliphorids in the coastal sun drying fish yards and the role of the species in containing the vector species. The number of flies and maggots were found related with the visit of cattle egrets, demonstrating the importance of the species in controlling the vectors.</jats:p

The regional temperature variability in Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) using Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study dataset and implications of different averaging process.

Indian Himalayan Region(IHR) is one of the important determining factor of climate and water availability of Indian subcontinent  with its high altitudinal variation and significance of its spatial location. Even the minimal variation in climate condition of this region could evoke cumulative chain consequences which could tremendously influence the social and economic situation of our country. This necessitate the better understanding of regional level assessment of climate change in these mountain system.    Averaging process is a simplification procedure for obtaining the numerical indication of extent of temperature variability from multiple and long term observations. It gives comparable and predictable indices of long term temperature variability in global to local scale with directionality and intensity of change. It is also helpful in interpolating the information from known to unknown observations. With situation like Indian Himalayan region where the availability of past historical temperature availability  is very sparse and along with its uniqueness, averaging processes is an essential tool in understanding the climate change and its possible consequences in its vast influential zones. Thus it is imperative to find the most appropriate methodology to be followed in averaging processes which are to be based on the underlaying assumption of homogeneity in observation, reliance on base line trend and linear, covariance based spatial interpolation methodology.         The objective of the present work was to find the appropriate methodology for averaging processes in IHR scenario of immense geographical and altitude variability. Using the data from recently published Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study dataset, it  aims to compare the long term temperature trend in IHR with newly devised local Berkley averaging processes and widely used offset methodology. The data for IHR stations (21 nos) grouped into North Western (5 Nos) and Eastern part (17 Nos) was extracted and analyzed from the BEST dataset using the R statistical software packages  'BerkeleyEarth' and 'RghcnV3'. The result shows that significant positive trend was observed in North Western IHR for mean temperature TAVG (tau=0.134, p<0.01), temperature maximum TMAX(tau=0.0813, p<0.01) and temperature minimum TMIN (tau=0.139, p<0.01) for the year 1875-2011. For North Eastern IHR TAVG (tau=0.163, p<0.01) shows positive trend for the year 1848-2011,  TMAX shows (tau=0.247, p<0.01) positive trend for the year 1875-2011, TMIN shows significant negative trend (tau=-0.123, p<0.01) on the contrary to all. In the case of following offset averaging methodology for North western IHR TAVG(tau=0.118, p<0.01), TMIN(tau=0.129, p<0.01) and TMAX(tau=0.0691, p<0.01) shows significant positive trend for the year 1875-2011. For the North Eastern IHR TAVG(tau=0.167, p<0.01) and TMAX (tau=0.145, p<0.01) shows significant positive  trend and TMIN shows significant negative trend (tau=-0.0362, p<0.01). The related spatial extent analysis of Berkley averaging and offset methodology- Kriging and average by cell respectively would further give the intensity and directionality of the temperature variability in the region. </p

Littoral Benthic Macroinvertebrates as Indicators of Impact in Four Urban Lakes of Coimbatore, India.

Research Area and Question: Littoral Benthic Macro invertebrate community composition, abundance, and diversity reflect the nature and environmental quality of lakes. The presentstudy was carried out to assess the impact on four lakes of Coimbatore, which are facing varying degree of anthropogenic pressure using littoral benthic macro invertebrate abundance. Objectives and Methodology: Benthic macro-invertebrate samples were collected in triplicates from littoral zones (depth 0-0.5 m) from 3 sites in each lake during February 2009 by using Van Veen’s Grab sampler with surface area of 0.0318 m2. At each sampling site, from where benthic samples were collected, water samples were also collected and analysed for varies physio-chmeical parameters to estimate Water Quality Index (WQI). Taxonomic identification was done upto family level and the total number of individuals in each family were counted and recorded. Results: Highest taxa richness was seen in Kurchi lake (17 families), followed by Perur Chinakulam lake (14 families) and Ukkadam lake (13 families). Shannon Wiener diversity for macro-invertebrates was highest in Chinnakulam lake (H=2.2531) followed by Perur lake (H=2.0771), Kurchi lake (H=2.0636) and Ukkadam lake (H=1.2141). WQI was highest in Ukkadam lake (123, highly polluted), followed by Kurchi lake (97), Chinnakulam lake (84) and Perur lake (75). Discussion: The results shows that based on diversity indices Ukkadam lake is found to be highly impacted from anthropogenic pressures followed by Kurchi, perur and Chinnakulam. This is again confirmed by WQI in all lakes. In the case of Chinnakulam the WQI reflects a t temporary impairment in water quality, habitat suitability for benthos because of the seasonal inflows. This lake is facing relatively reduced anthropogenic pressure except for certain temporary inflows and wastes. The study also indicates the urgent requirement of mitigation measures in these lakes to contain further degradation.</p

Breeding biology of pond heron in Kerala, South India

AbstractRegular intensive investigations to locate nesting colonies were carried out early monsoon of 1999 up to 2002. For detailed study a few breeding colonies were selected. The nesting trees, nest characteristics, eggs characteristics, incubation, hatching and hatchlings were investigated.Altogether 17 plant species were used for nesting. Nest materials were collected from 24 plant species for building nest. The mean maximum size of the nest material used was 29.05 cm and the mean minimum size was 13.46 cm. The clutch size varied from 2-5 and clutches of three were very common. The maximum and minimum length and breadth of eggs were 48.0 x 32.0 and 33.3 x 24.1 respectively. The weight of eggs varied between 17.8 and 11.2 gm. Both sexes take part in incubation that extended for 18-24 days. Hatching success reached 82%. Their food consisted mainly of fishes and both parents took part in feeding the nestlings.</jats:p

Conservation of Microhabitat: A case Study on Natural Water Filled tree holes in Tropical Rain Forest of Western Ghats.

Microhabitat conservation is an important paradigm for minimum possible conservation in the scenario of large scale habitat destruction. Tree holes are the important microhabitat in old growth forests occupied by variety of organisms from invertebrates to mammals for their nesting, breeding, and resting sites. Water filled tree holes form a permanent or ephemeral freshwater aquatic habitats inhabited largely by invertebrates especially by aquatic insects. The baseline data on community diversity in these habitat is essential for conservation of this unique habitat  The sampling involved searching for water filled tree holes in the study area, followed by measuring variables such as GBH, Height of the tree hole from ground, opening area of tree hole, water holding capacity, aspect of tree hole, percentage shrub, herb and tree coverage around the tree hole.  Water in the container habitat will be collected through siphoning and filtered through mesh size 250 micrometer after determining the volume of water. The aquatic organism retained in the mesh is collected. Portion of insect samples is  preserved and remaining life specimens are reared for adult stage and identified up to the possible taxonomic level. The dry weight of leaf litter if any present in the tree hole is  taken as source of nutrient. The weight of the preserved specimens is taken as a measure of biomass in tree hole. Nutrient in the water along with basic water chemistry variables are also estimated Aquatic insects of 15 families from 7 orders are recorded in water filled tree holes in Silent Valley National Park and New Amarambalam Reserve Forest. (Figure shows representative insect form each family). Frogs and lizards of Philautus sp. and Cnemaspis sp. respectively are sighted from the tree holes of Silent Valley National Park. Tarantula and Slug are sighted from the water filled bamboo internodes of New Amarambalam Reserve Forest. Other than Insects, Spiders, Earthworms, Tadpoles and Gastropods are recorded from the tree holes sampled. It is observed that water filled tree holes which are more persistent are having high species diversity and longer food web.  </p