North Andaman Islands (NAI) are one of the major island groups of Andaman and Nicobar archipelagos (Fig.1), consisting tropical rainforest encompassing varied species richness and diversity coupled with high endemism (Prasad et al..). As per Champion and Seth [year] the predominant forest types of the study area are Andaman Evergreen (EG), Andaman Semi-evergreen (SEG), Andaman Moist deciduous (MD), Littoral and Mangrove forests. Major part of the island is covered with SEG which is scattered at all the topographic and environmental gradients. EG is restricted to hilly areas and higher concentrations are found in the southern parts of the islands while the moist deciduous forests are found in low lying areas with major distribution in the northern
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In the view of disturbances (both anthropogenic and natural) these islands are prone to; it is prerequisite to have information about the actual species richness (extrapolated / predicted) these islands harbor for conservation and protection measurements, apart from the data obtained from field studies. Thus the current study attempts to use non-parametric estimators to bring out the expected species richness of NAI. Also, this study is also of first kind not only for NAI, but also for the entire A&N …show more content…
A combination of both the methods showed high species (289) in case of SEG. And overall aggregation of various sampling methods in different forest types of NAI yielded about 446 species.
The reason that could be attributed to high species richness in SEG is mainly due to its distribution at heterogeneous topographic conditions.
Sampling strategy played major role in accounting varied species richness. In all the forest types contiguous plots recorded low number of species to their counter random sampling. Contiguous plots show the homogeneous environment with limited species dispersal and distribution thus resulting in low values. However among the three forest types EG showed high count in contiguous sampling which could be attributed to their location at undisturbed high altitudinal locations maintain intact forest conditions and low in case of other two forest types with their presence at lower altitudinal and human proximal
In the view of disturbances (both anthropogenic and natural) these islands are prone to; it is prerequisite to have information about the actual species richness (extrapolated / predicted) these islands harbor for conservation and protection measurements, apart from the data obtained from field studies. Thus the current study attempts to use non-parametric estimators to bring out the expected species richness of NAI. Also, this study is also of first kind not only for NAI, but also for the entire A&N …show more content…
A combination of both the methods showed high species (289) in case of SEG. And overall aggregation of various sampling methods in different forest types of NAI yielded about 446 species.
The reason that could be attributed to high species richness in SEG is mainly due to its distribution at heterogeneous topographic conditions.
Sampling strategy played major role in accounting varied species richness. In all the forest types contiguous plots recorded low number of species to their counter random sampling. Contiguous plots show the homogeneous environment with limited species dispersal and distribution thus resulting in low values. However among the three forest types EG showed high count in contiguous sampling which could be attributed to their location at undisturbed high altitudinal locations maintain intact forest conditions and low in case of other two forest types with their presence at lower altitudinal and human proximal