Effect of variation in Eucalyptus Leaf Litter Inputs On Microhyla ornata tadpoles and Freshwater Zooplankton

Chavan, Deepak (2018) Effect of variation in Eucalyptus Leaf Litter Inputs On Microhyla ornata tadpoles and Freshwater Zooplankton. UG thesis, Azim Premji University.

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Abstract

Monocultures cause a serious threat to the native biodiversity of a region. Along with other parts of the world, even in India, there has been a shift from biodiverse landscapes to monocultures. In India, eucalyptus is one of the commonly planted monocultures. Leaf litter from such plantations get added into water bodies and this leads to cross ecosystem nutrient flow which is from terrestrial systems into aquatic ones. Inoculation of leaf litter into water bodies affects the water quality and this effects the aquatic community. There has been no work done in India, which looks at the effect of monoculture leaf litter on aquatic systems and especially eucalyptus being an invasive plant, we are unaware of its effects on aquatic environments. Therefore, we looked at the effect of different amounts of eucalyptus leaf litter on Microhyla tadpoles and freshwater zooplankton. The experiment had four treatments of 0(control), 8(low), 40(medium) and 80(high) grams of leaf litter respectively. It was found that pH was significantly different across treatments. Treatments with low amounts of eucalyptus leaf litter were more alkaline as compared to high leaf litter. Turbidity showed an increase over time. The leaf litter amount had a significant effect on average weight at metamorphosis of tadpoles, where higher average weight was observed in high leaf litter treatment as compared to low leaf litter treatment. No effect was seen on proportion survivorship and proportion metamorphosis of tadpoles. Zooplanktons abundance was affected by treatments. Overall, zooplankton abundance decreased in all treatments over time but the decrease was much lesser in high leaf litter treatment as compared to other treatments.

Item Type: Thesis (UG)
Authors: Chavan, Deepak
Subjects: Natural Sciences > Life sciences; biology
Divisions: Azim Premji University > School of Arts and Sciences
Full Text Status: Restricted
URI: http://publications.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/id/eprint/478
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