Frugivory of Phyllanthus emblica at Rajaji National Park, northwest India

Phyllanthus emblica Linn. (Euphorbiaceae,syn Emblica officinalis Gærtn, vern. Amla, Nelli) is a 10–15 m tall tree, common in tropical deciduous forests of South Asia. It flowers during March–April and has an extended fruiting period from October to March. The fruit is globose (15–33 mm), greenish-yellow and drupaceous, encasing a hard stony endocarp that on drying dehisces to release six kidney-shaped seeds (4–6 mm; Figure 1). The P. emblica fruit, one of the richest natural sources of vitamin C1, is edible and is used in pickle, hair-oil and traditional medicine. It is among India’s most important non-timber forest produce (NTFP)

Carnivore conservation at the crossroads

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Science in the wilderness: the predicament of scientific research in India’s wildlife reserves

Ecology and allied scientific disciplines aim to understand patterns and processes pertaining to wild species, their ecosystems and their relationships with humans. India’s wildlife reserves are important ‘living laboratories’ for these disciplines. Today, there is a disturbing trend across India where scientists are increasingly denied access to wildlife reserves for scientific research or are seriously impeded, without scope for redress. Although official wildlife management rhetoric emphasizes the need for scientific research, in reality, it is viewed as undesirable and permitted, if at all, as a concession, subject to the discretion of individual forest officials. With no enabling legislative or policy framework to promote and apply science in our wildlife reserves, we are concerned that the future of many scientific disciplines in India is being jeopardized. Here, we provide an analysis of this issue and outline steps needed to promote scientific research in our natural areas

Layered Tablets: A Novel Oral Solid Dosage Form

Oral solid dosage forms hold a predominant position in the drug delivery system. Tablets are the most widely used and convenient dosage form. Due to their ease of manufacturing, the minimum cost of production, easy handling and storage, and better stability, tablets are most preferred. Patients who are prescribed more than one drug are in a situation to consume multiple tablets. To minimize the counts, one or more drugs are cast into layers to form a single tablet, thus called layered tablets. Layered tablets tend to improve patient compliance and reduce the cost of production by half. Layers can be of multiple drugs or the same drug at different doses or drugs with release enhancers or drugs with fillers. Layered tablets hold a greater potential with better patient outcomes as well as stay production-friendly

Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas

The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon¹⁻³. With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses⁴⁻⁹. As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world’s major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health’: about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.Keywords: Ecology, Environmental scienc

IDENTIFICATION OF BIOMES AND THEIR INDICATOR TAXA FOR CONSERVATION PLANNING: A CASE STUDY FROM CENTRAL INDIAN BIRDS

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