D. Senthilkumar and S. Paulsamy
Abstract
The population change of the weed, Lantana camara of Verbenaceae family in three disturbance gradient teak forests has been studied over a period of 25 months in Topslip of Anaimalais, the Western Ghats. The size of the population was increased drastically when the degree of disturbance increased (i.e.) 34.69 and 56.66% of population was gained in disturbed and degraded forests respectively over the study period. The death rate of adults (i.e.) individuals reproduced by vegetative means was higher than their recruitment rate in both the disturbed and degraded sites. However, this fact was reverse in the case of undisturbed forest. On the other hand, the death rate of seedlings was determined to be higher than the recruitment rate in undisturbed and disturbed forests, whereas in degraded forests, the recruitment rate of seedling was higher than that of the death rate. The results further revealed that the population size of the studied weed increased severely due to the disturbance in the forests of Topslip region. Intensive protection of forests may be helpful to reduce the enhancement of population size of L. camara in this region.