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New Distributional Record of the Northernmost Myristica Swamp from the Western Ghats of Maharashtra


Affiliations
1 CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad 500 007, India
2 Nityata River Otter Conservancy, Bengaluru, India
 

Myristica swamps are freshwater swamps represented by any of the members of the Myristicaceae family like Gymnacranthera canarica and Myristica fatua Houtt. var. magnifica1,2. These are known to be the remnant of primeval forests of the Western Ghats with a history of over 140 million years2. Myristica swamps were described from Travancore3, and later from the valleys of Sendurney, Kulathuppuzha and Anchal ranges from Southern Kerala4. Similar swamps were further reported from elsewhere in the Western Ghats5-7 of Karnataka. The report of high endemism associated with the swamps8-11 and the presence of red-listed species of plants in the myristica swamps12,13 highlights the need to record and map these swamps in the Western Ghats. Owing to rich diversity, threats and endemism, Chandran et al.2 stressed on the efforts of locating such swampy relics. So far, the northernmost distribution of Myristica swamps in Western Ghats has been reported from ‘Nirankarachi Rai’, Bambar, Sattari taluka, Goa14-16.
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  • New Distributional Record of the Northernmost Myristica Swamp from the Western Ghats of Maharashtra

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Authors

Gayathri Sreedharan
CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad 500 007, India
Malhar Indulkar
Nityata River Otter Conservancy, Bengaluru, India

Abstract


Myristica swamps are freshwater swamps represented by any of the members of the Myristicaceae family like Gymnacranthera canarica and Myristica fatua Houtt. var. magnifica1,2. These are known to be the remnant of primeval forests of the Western Ghats with a history of over 140 million years2. Myristica swamps were described from Travancore3, and later from the valleys of Sendurney, Kulathuppuzha and Anchal ranges from Southern Kerala4. Similar swamps were further reported from elsewhere in the Western Ghats5-7 of Karnataka. The report of high endemism associated with the swamps8-11 and the presence of red-listed species of plants in the myristica swamps12,13 highlights the need to record and map these swamps in the Western Ghats. Owing to rich diversity, threats and endemism, Chandran et al.2 stressed on the efforts of locating such swampy relics. So far, the northernmost distribution of Myristica swamps in Western Ghats has been reported from ‘Nirankarachi Rai’, Bambar, Sattari taluka, Goa14-16.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv115%2Fi8%2F1434-1436