A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON BIODIVERSITY OF PLANT SPECIESBETWEEN NATURAL FOREST AND COFFEE AGRO FOREST INEASTERN GHATS OF ANDHRA PRADESH, INDIAJ. Ramalakshmana, Y.T. Rajesh Babu and S.B. PadalAbstract We studied plant biodiversity (trees, shrubs and herbs) in two kinds of forests, natural and coffee agroforests and comparing diversity of plant species between them.The natural forest contained 63 plant speciesin total, of which 44 were trees, 5 were shrubs, and 14 were herbs. The planted forest, on the other hand,contained 42 species of flora, including 35 trees, 1 shrub, and 6 herbs. In the natural forest, the Shannon-Wiener diversity indices for trees, shrubs, and herbs were 3.26, 1.53, and 2.57, respectively. In the coffeeagro forest, it was 2.91 for tree species, 0.00 for shrub species, and 1.77 for herb species. Simpson diversityindex were 0.95, 0.77 and 0.91 for trees, shrubs and herbs respectively in the natural forest. However, it was0.92 for tree species, 0.00 for shrub species and 0.82 for herb species in the coffee agro forest.Jaccardâssimilarity index showed that 72% species of trees, 20% species of shrubs and 33% species of herbs weresame in natural and coffee agro forest. |