Madhuca bourdillonii (Gamble) Lam. and Syzygium travancoricum Gamble, considered almost extinct but later found to be occurring in small numbers in their home range in Western Ghats, south of Palghat Gap, have been now discovered in some of the relic primeval evergreen forests of Uttara Kannada, over 700 km north. These relic forests also shelter scores of other rare endemic elements of flora and fauna. These findings highlight the need for making intensive efforts for locating more of such relic forests and documenting their biota. Also, biologists need to restrain from the tendencies of considering any novel occurrences of species away from their home ranges as new species, before ruling out the possibilities that these could be the relics of ancient populations or their morphological variants. Presence of relic forests does reveal the legacy of erstwhile contiguous forests, which is now fragmented due to rapid land use changes. Conservationists handling biodiversity hotspots should be able to distinguish between relics of primeval forests and advanced stages of secondary successions. Lack of such understanding will result in imperceptible extinctions of many endemic species.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Forests of the Western Ghats are well known for their evergreenness and high endemism. The present study carried out in the Sharavathi River Basin in the central Western Ghats of India is to find the relationship between forest evergreenness and tree endemism. The study was carried out from 2000 to 2006 and the methodology followed is a combination of transect and quadrat method nested with smaller quadrats for shrub layer and herb layer. A total of 51 endemic tree species belonging to 20 families were recorded. The results reveal that the composition of endemic tree population is closely associated with the evergreenness of the forest. With the increase in evergreenness, endemism also increased and almost all the endemic trees of the region occurred in very high evergreen class. Many of them were exclusively found in very high evergreen forests and ground layer data support this observation. Such narrow distribution of endemics makes them most vulnerable to extinction. The present study will be helpful in understanding the association of endemic trees with evergreenness of forest and will be useful in conservation as well as restoration of these endemic trees in their natural habitats.