IMPORTANT BIRD AREAS OF SRI LANKA PRESENT STATUS

The IBA programme produces inventories of internationally recognized sites,which are vital for conservation of birds. These sites are identified using setof four standard global criteria. These criteria are designed to selectrepresentative areas of most important bird habitats, principally those that areunder the most severe pressure. As birds are the best indicators for overallbiological diversity, most IBAs will be significant for other animals andplants too. The reason for initiating a global IBA programme was obvious asthroughout the world important sites for wildlife conservation are beingdestroyed, polluted or disturbed at an increasing pace. Habitat loss andmodification is the single largest threat to biodiversity. Many threatenedspecies are in fact threatened by the same factors at particular sites.Therefore, site-based conservation measures can conserve many species atthe same time.First task for the IBA programme was the identification of important birds forfirst three categories i.e. globally threatened species, restricted range speciesand biome restricted species. Ten species of globally threatened species areconsidered for the IBA programme since 14 of 24 globally threatened speciesrecorded from Sri Lanka are vagrants. Twenty-four restricted range speciesincluding newly discovered Serendib scops owl are included in the secondcategory. All nationally threatened species are also included in this category.Nineteen species are listed under biome-restricted species for thisprogramme.In Sri Lanka, 70 Important Bird Areas have been identified all over theisland. From these IBAs, 47 supports globally threatened species while 56sites facilitate restricted range species. 46 IBAs contained biome restrictedspecies. For bird aggregations, 26 sites have been identified. Four IBAsnamely Yala, Bundala, Gal Oya and Udawalawe are qualified under all fourcategories. 39 sites qualify for three of the four categories. According to thearea of the IBAs, 25 sites are less than lOOOha in size while 27 IBAs arebetween 1000 and 5000ha. This shows the severity of fragmentation of theimportant areas. 71% of the IBAs are located in the South Western part of theisland showing the importance of protecting wet zone forests, which arehighly threatened by human disturbances

BREEDING STATUS OF THE PAINTED STORK Mycteria leucocephala IN THE KUMANA-VILLU OF THE YALA EAST NATIONAL PARK

Painted stork is a Near Threatened species that uses wetlands as their feedingand breeding grounds. The breeding colony of painted storks at Kumana villuis one of the oldest known colonies in the island. Mangrove vegetationlocated in the middle of the villu provides ideal conditions for nesting notonly for painted storks, but also for Black headed Ibises, Spoonbills, herons,egrets and even for the globally threatened Spot billed Pelicans.A survey was done in the month of July to assess breeding status of thePained Storks in this villu. The survey was land based where three mangrovevegetation patches (5000m2) were surveyed using a spotting scope (NikonFieldscope). First, all trees in each patches that contain painted stork nestswere identified. Then number of nests on each tree, number of adults,hatchlings and fledglings on nests were recorded.A total of 222 nests of painted storks were recorded. This comprised of 217active nests of which 74 contained hatchlings while 133 nests containedfledglings. Average number of nests per tree was 3.13 while the number ofnests per tree ranged from 1 to 10. Average hatchling size was 1.81 whileaverage fledgling size was 1.78 where 61.35% nests contained 2 hatchlingsor fledglings while 29.95% nests contained only one hatchling or fledgling.The nest height ranged from 1 to 10m with average nest height being 3.0m.According to the available literature the breeding season of painted storks isfrom December to May. However, during this survey it was discovered that98% of the nests were active as late as July indicating that there can be greatdeal of variation in the breeding strategies of painted storks. Furthermore,based on our studies we have estimated that there can be approximatelythousand breeding pairs of painted storks in Kumana villu, making this oneof the most important breeding sites for this species. Therefore this siteshould be continuously monitored in order to better understand the breedingbehavior of painted storks

IMPACTS OF CARDAMOM CULTIVATION ON FLORAL DIVERS

Knuckles Forest Range is a unique ecosystem and extending to 160 km2 in Matale andKandy Districts of Central Province. Together with the landscape and the climate it has·resulted a variety of natural vegetation types. Among these, sub montane forests arebighly affected by commercial planting of cardamom by villagers and also by large scalecompanies,This research was conducted in Riverston area of Knuckles Forest Range. Selectivesampling was done in the natural forest and in the areas where the undergrowth isdominated with cardamom. Within the areas, three 20 x 20 m plots were established andfollowing measurements were done; no. of species/area, no. of individuals/area and perspecies, vertical stratification in the two types of areas. DBH was measured in trees withmore than Im height.The results depict 48 plant species in natural forest and 31 species in cardamom plantedareas, with a high number of genera and families in natural forest. 29 species out of 48species were only confined to the natural forest areas. Height and diameter distributionpatterns were different in two conditions. Species diversity (Shannon's diversity index)was significantly different and it was 1.1300 in natural forest areas and 0.5678 incardamom plantation. Density of trees (number of stems per ha) also showed suchpattern and the values were 6433 and 537 respectively. Dominance of species accordingto the Importance Value Index (IVI) in the two conditions was also different. Comparisonof endemicity in two conditions showed 45.83% in natural forest and 29.03% incardamom plantation.The results of the present study also provide evidence as to the detrimental effects ofcardamom planting on the ecology of the sub montane forests of Knuckles Range.

Historical changes in number of Endemic birds in Sri Lanka from 1852 to 2006

Number of endemic bird species, which is special interest among the wildlife enthusiasts for all thetime, continuously fluctuated in the ornithological history of Sri Lanka,To clarify the number of endemic species present in Sri Lanka all 1to study the change of this numberin the history of Ornithology in Sri Lanka, systematic literature survey was done. Twenty majorpublications including field guides and checklists that are published from 1854 to 2006 were considered.The number of endemics has changed from a maximum of 4 7 to a minimum of20 from 1854 to 2006.Sixty two of the present species were endemic at least once in the history although there are only 26species are to be considered as definite endemics at present.Many of the species considered as endemic to the island were discovered before these publications.On Iy nine species were discovered in or after 1852 but before 1872. And one species was describedvery recently in 2004. However, only 11 species excluding newly discovered Serendib scops owl,have appeared in all these publications as endemics. Four species were discovered in 1870 and 1972and those were in all the publications as endemics after the discovery. Although discovered in 1850,White-faced Starling was added to the list in 1872 and remained continuously. Hence, these 16 speciescan be accepted as endemics without any argument.Main reasons for changes in numbers are upgrades of existing subspecies and downgrade to subspecieslevel. Six of the present endemic species fluctuated in species and subspecies levels in the history.Another 30 species including 7 proposed endemic species neeJ taxonomic studies since those werechanged between species and subspecies levels.Sri Lanka Red faced Malkoha was removed twice and Yellow-cared bulbul was also removed oncefrom the endemic list due to unconfirmed sight records from South India. Sri Lanka Wood pigeon wasremoved from the list by Murray (1890) due to misidentification as Nilgiri Wood Pigeon.Representation of present endemic species in each of the publ ication ranges from 61.54% in Blyth(1852) to 100% in Rasmussen and Anderton (2005). However. second highest percentage (92.31 %)was represented in Legge (1880) and Murray (1890), more than a century ago.

BREEDING BIRDS AT KUMANA VILLU OF YALA EAST NATIONAL PARK: STATUS AFTER 22 YEARS

Kumana villu is one of the oldest known breeding sites for many waterbirdspecies that breeds colonially. The canopy of mangrove trees located insidethe villu provides nesting facilities for the large water birds such as Paintedstorks, Spoonbills, Black headed Ibises, egrets, cormorants and globallythreatened Spot billed Pelicans. A detailed study of this breeding colony wasdone in 1983 By Kotagama. After 22 years, the breeding bird survey wasreinitiated in July 2005.First, a roosting count was done to estimate the population size of breedingbirds in the Kumana villu. The counts were conducted from 3 pre-identifiedlocations between 1700 to 1900h in the 2nd week of July. Three mangrovevegetation patches of 5000m2 were chosen for a detailed nest count. In eachpatch, the number of trees used for nesting was recorded. Then for each tree,number of nests, the species to whom the nests belonged, the height of eachnest and the current status of nesting were recorded.Many species of birds use this villu for roosting while Painted Storks showedthe highest population density (728). Among other water birds, spot billedpelicans (422), spoonbills (57), cormorants (187), egrets (184), Black headedIbises (74) and darters (41) are the most common taxa. In 1983,228 paintedstorks, 565 pelicans, 125 ibises and 609 egrets were recorded. Five flightpaths of birds that come to roost were identified in 1983. However, only 3flight paths were observed during this survey.A total of 293 nests were recorded that belonged to five species namelypurple herons, little cormorants, painted storks, spot billed pelicans andspoonbills. Most common nesting species in this period was painted stork and97.6% of their nests were still active. In May 1983, total of 701 nestsbelonged to seven species were recorded and most nests were of paintedstorks (529). In 1983, nests of four additional species, grey herons, ibises,egrets and night herons were recorded while purple herons and cormorantswere not recorded to be nesting.The mangrove vegetation has changed from a diverse habitat to a singlespecies (S. caseolaris) stand during last 22 years. Reduction of mangrovearea was also observed. Further, invasion of the common weed species Typhaangustifolia is another major change that has taken place during this period.Isolated mangrove trees and trees that are located beyond the perimeter of thevillu are not selected by birds for nesting. Low density of vegetation insidethe villu is a limiting factor for breeding birds. Most remaining trees in thevillu are not in good condition and therefore a replanting programme isrecommended to ensure continuous breeding of this colony.

VEGETATIVE PROPAGATION OF Dipterocarpus zeylanicus BY CUTIINGS

Dipterocarpus zeylanicus, an endemic tree in Sri Lanka offers great potential forbridging the gap between supply and demand of timber in the country. However,at present it has not been widely used as a plantation species. Establishment ofplantation by seeds has proved somewhat difficult due to low viability etc.Genetically uniform planting stock can be obtained rapidly through vegetativepropagation.With the above objective in mind an experiment was conducted to propagate stemcuttings of Ir.zeylanicus using a variety of rooting hormones under both mist andnon-mist conditions. In all the instances. cuttings of 15 em length and 0.3-0.4 mrnbasal diameter with two and half leaves were used. The hormone concentrationsused were, Indole Butyic Acid (lBA) 500 pprn, 1000 ppm and 1500 ppm and thecommercial hormone Sector (NAA + fungicide). Control did not have anyhormone treatment. The medium used was sand. The experiment was conductedunder two conditional environments; under a automatic mist and in a non-mistpolypropagator, a low cost alternative which was also designed to maintain a highhumidity through water manipulation.After the experimental period of 10 weeks, there was a marked differencebetween the mist and non-mist conditions in percentage survival of cuttings. Inall the treatments, % survival was higher under mist. In terms of percentagerooting, the cuttings under the non-mist propagator did not show rooting at allalthough callusing was observed in all the treatments at varying success levels.Among the rooting treatments, the highest percentage rooting (38. 10%) wasshown in the control without rooting hormones closely followed by otherhormone treatments. However, the treatment 1000 pprn of IBA showed thelowest percentage rooting (11.11 %).From these results, it can be concluded that

Comparative transcriptomics with self-organizing map reveals cryptic photosynthetic differences between two accessions of North American Lake cress

Abstract Because natural variation in wild species is likely the result of local adaptation, it provides a valuable resource for understanding plant-environmental interactions. Rorippa aquatica (Brassicaceae) is a semi-aquatic North American plant with morphological differences between several accessions, but little information available on any physiological differences. Here, we surveyed the transcriptomes of two R. aquatica accessions and identified cryptic physiological differences between them. We first reconstructed a Rorippa phylogeny to confirm relationships between the accessions. We performed large-scale RNA-seq and de novo assembly; the resulting 87,754 unigenes were then annotated via comparisons to different databases. Between-accession physiological variation was identified with transcriptomes from both accessions. Transcriptome data were analyzed with principal component analysis and self-organizing map. Results of analyses suggested that photosynthetic capability differs between the accessions. Indeed, physiological experiments revealed between-accession variation in electron transport rate and the redox state of the plastoquinone pool. These results indicated that one accession may have adapted to differences in temperature or length of the growing season