‘Western Ghats are both museum and cradle of diversity for woody plants’

The study, which was led by senior CCMB scientist Dr Jahnavi Joshi and her group, has sought to shed light on evolution of plants in the Western Ghats region of India and was recently published in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Hyderabad: The Western Ghats serves as a ‘museum’ and at the same time a ‘cradle’ of evolutionary diversity. The region has both old and young, on evolutionary timescales in millions of years, plant species, a recent study by group of researchers from Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), has said.

The study, which was led by senior CCMB scientist Dr Jahnavi Joshi and her group, has sought to shed light on the evolution of plants in the Western Ghats region of India and was recently published in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences).

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“This study complements several taxonomic studies in the region, which show the Western Ghats have a high diversity of woody plants, with over 60 percent being endemic. Interestingly, the Southern Western Ghats region has six times higher number of species than the northern Western Ghats”, says first author of the study, Abhishek Gopal.

Such large scale studies covering huge geographic area and looking at timescales in millions of years and includes hundreds of species are helpful as they help us understand if there are any generalities in how diversity is generated and maintained, says Dr Jahanavi Joshi, the senior author of the study.

Dr Joshi pointed out that the study has showed that Western Ghats hold tremendous evolutionary diversity. “We highlight the global value of the Western Ghats, demonstrating, in particular, the importance of protecting the southern Western Ghats, which is an engine of plant diversification and persistence.

The results of the CCMB study can also be used to augment the existing protected areas in the landscape, which are facing severe anthropogenic stress, the researchers added.