The Role of Perches in Accelerating Seed Arrival in Human abandoned Clearings Within Bhadra Tiger Reserve, India

Abstract

Seed arrival is often the primary limitation to forest regeneration in denuded landscapes, with the number of seeds arriving diminishing rapidly with increase in distance from remnant seed sources. We compared seed rain collected at different distances from the forest edge in seed rain traps with and without introduced bamboo perches in human abandoned agricultural clearings in Bhadra Tiger Reserve. The number of seeds collected per trap below perches was 38 times greater than the number of seeds collected in traps without perches. The species richness of seeds collected per trap below perches was ten-fold greater than in traps without perches. Our study showed that introducing artificial perches is an effective method to improve seed arrival into tree-less habitats, as has been found in studies elsewhere