ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

ASSIGNMENT 2

SUBMITTED BY:
ASHI BHARDWAJ
(DTU/2K16/A1/067)
ASHI GUPTA
(DTU/2K16/A1/068)
 INDIA AS A MEGA DIVERSITY NATION
What is mega diversity?
A large number and wide range of species; exceptional
biological diversity.

What is a mega-diverse country?

A mega-diverse country is one that harbors the majority of
the Earths species and is therefore considered extremely
bio-diverse.

The 17 mega-diverse countries are:

Australia
Brazil
China
Colombia
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Ecuador
India
Indonesia
Madagascar
Malaysia
Mexico
Papua New Guinea
Peru
Philippines
South Africa
United States
 Venezuela

India as a mega diverse country:

India is rich in biodiversity from north to south and from east
to west. India contains many species that worlds none
country have.

It has 14 major basins through which drain numerous

rivers.

The annual rainfall varies from less than 37 cm in

Rajasthan to 1500m in Cherrapunji.

The country experiences three different seasons

winter, summer, and monsoons.

It has two global terrestrial biodiversity hot spots the

North-eastern States and the Western Ghats.

The Western Ghats have moist deciduous forests and

rainforests. The region shows high species diversity as
well as high levels of endemism. Around 62% of reptile
and 77% of amphibians are found in here.

The North-eastern States depicts high altitudinal

variations. This area has at least 163 globally threatened
species like one-horned rhinoceros and the wild Asian
water buffalo. The Relict Dragonfly, an endangered
species found here. This zone houses the Himalayan
Newt the only salamander species found within Indian
limits.
Species Diversity:
India contains a great wealth of biological diversity in its
terrestrial and aquatic areas. This richness is shown in
absolute numbers of species and the proportion they
represent of the world total.

Table 1: Comparison between the Number of Species in India and

the World
Group Number of Number of SI/SW
species species (%)
in India (SI) in the
world (SW)
Mammals 350 4629 7.6
 Birds 1224 9702 12.6
Reptiles 408 6550 6.2
Amphibians 197 4522 4.4
Fishes 2546 21730 11.7
Flowering 15000 250000 6.0
Plants

India has many scientific institutes and botanical garden (like

NBRI), university departments interested in various aspects of
biodiversity. A large number of scientists and environmentalist
have been engaged in inventory, research, and monitoring.
The general state of knowledge about the abundance and
richness of the species is therefore fairly good.

Ecological conditions:
The great variety of ecological conditions prevailing in India,
tropical location, climate and physical features all aid in
supporting an enormous diversity of wildlife, including, hot
desert forms, like wild ass and the cold desert forms, like the
Tibetan antelope: animals of open scrubland, like the black
buck and of grassy swamps, like the rhinoceros; animals of
the deciduous forests like the wild gaur and of the tropical
rainforests, like the lion-tailed macaque.

Bio-geographical composition:
 Indias bio-geographical composition is unique as it
combines living forms from three major bio-geographical
realms, namely Eurasian, Agro-Tropical, and Indo-Malayan.
India lies at the confluence of Ethiopian, Palaearctic, and
Indo-Malayan faunas and possesses some interesting
components. The chinkara, the hyena, and the rates
represent the Ethiopian element; the lynx, wolf, hangul
represent the Palaearctic; the Chinese by red panda and the
musk-deer; the Indo-Malayan by the hoolock gibbon, the
goat-antelope, and the mouse deer. The endemic varieties
include sloth bear, antelope or black buck, four-horned
antelope and Boselaphus or nilgai.

Flora and Fauna:

15,000 species of flowering plants, 53,430 species of insects;
5050 species of mollusks, 6,500 species of other
invertebrates; 2,546 species of fishes; 1228 species of birds,
446 species of reptiles, 372 species of mammals and 204
species of amphibians have been identified. Indias
biodiversity is estimated to be over 45,000 plant species
representing about 7% of the worlds flora and India stands
tenth in 25 most plant-rich countries of the world. Its variety
of animal life represents 6.5 per cent of worlds fauna. Being
one of the oldest and largest agriculture societies, India has
at least 166 species of crop plants and 320 species of wild
relatives of cultivated crops. The vegetation ranges from
xerophytic in Rajasthan, evergreen in the North-East and the
Ghat areas, mangroves of coastal regions, conifers of the hills
and the dry deciduous forests of central India to alpine
pastures in the high reaches of the Himalaya. The forests
India have been classified into 16 types and 251 subtypes by
climatic and edaphic conditions. The country has many
alternative medicines, like Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and
Homeopathic systems that are mainly prepared from plant-
based raw materials. Herbal preparations for pharmaceutical
and cosmetic purposes form part of the traditional
biodiversity uses in India.

It has great marine diversity due to its 7500km long coastline.

The near shore coastal waters of India are extremely rich
fishing grounds. The marine environment of India supports
coral reefs in the Gulf of Kutch, off the southern mainland
coast, and around some islands opposite Sri Lanka. Indian
coral reefs resources are of high commercial value. On the
Gulf of Mannar and Gulf of Kutch reefs corals, coral debris
and coral sands are widely exploited, and ornamental shells,
sharks, and pearl oysters are the basis of an important reef
industry in the south of India. Five species of marine turtle
occur in Indian waters: Green turtle Chelonia mydas,
Loggerhead Caretta caretta, Olive RidleyLepidochelys olive,
Hawksbill Eretmochelys imbricate, and Leatherback
Dermochelys coriacea. Seagrass beds are important feeding
areas for the Dugong dugon, plus several species of marine
turtle.

Endemic Species in India:

India has many endemic plant and animal species. Among
plants, species endemism is estimated at 33%. More than 140
endemic genera but no endemic families (Botanical Survey of
India, 1983). Areas rich in endemism are north-east India, the
Western Ghats and the north-western and eastern Himalayas
are hot spot. A small pocket of local endemism also occurs in
the Eastern Ghats. The Gangetic plains are generally poor in
endemics, while the Andaman and Nicobar Islands contribute
at least 220 species to the endemic flora of India (Botanical
Survey of India, 1983). WCMC's Threatened Plants Unit (TPU)
is in the preliminary stages of cataloguing the world's centres
of plant diversity; approximately 150 botanical sites
worldwide are so far recognised as important for conservation
action, but others are constantly being identified (IUCN, 1987).
Five locations have so far been issued for India: the
Agastyamalai Hills, Silent Valley and New Amarambalam
Reserve and Periyar National Park (all in the Western Ghats),
and the Eastern and Western Himalaya. Endemism among
mammals and birds is relatively low. Only 44 species of Indian
mammal have a range that is confined entirely to within Indian
territorial limits. Four endemic species of conservation
significance occur in the Western Ghats. They are the Lion-
tailed macaque Macaca silenus, Nilgiri leaf
monkey Trachypithecus johni, Brown palm civet Paradoxurus
jerdoni and Nilgiri tahr Hemitragus hylocrius. Only 55 bird
species are endemic to India, with distributions concentrated
in areas of high rainfall. They are located mainly in eastern
India along the mountain chains where the monsoon shadow
occurs, south-west India and the Nicobar and Andaman
Islands. In contrast, endemism in the Indian reptilian and
amphibian fauna is high. There are around 187 endemic
reptiles, and 110 endemic amphibian species. Eight amphibian
genera are not found outside India.
Indias Biodiversity as a beauty:
The eastern Himalayas from a humid region having high
monsoon rain fall, milder temperature and less snowfall. The
mighty mountains with their snow-pick and extremely rich
forest exert a tremendous influence on the flora and fauna of
the region. Arunachal Pradesh is a land of mighty rocks and
luxuriant forests, gentle streams and raging torrents. It
presents a breath taking spectacle of nature in her glory,
beauty of gorges and galaxy of ethnics people make the area
as one of the best in the world. The mountain range in Sikkim,
Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram and
the Darjeeling hills are symbol of celestial splendor where a
good number of peaks rise well over 7000m., the highest being
the Kanchenjungha 8335m which is very close to Mt. Everest,
the world highest peak.
Bio-cultural diversity:
There is a vital, but often neglected factor when we focus on
biodiversity. It may be a matter of surprise to understand
that the tribal people who officially constitute 7.5 percent of
Indias population have preserved around 90 percent of the
countrys bio-cultural diversity. To a large extent, the survival
of our biodiversity depends on how best the tribal are looked
after.

Preservation of bio-diversity:
To preserve the rich biodiversity, nine biosphere reserves
have been set up in specific biogeographic zones: the
biggest being in the Deccan Peninsula in the Nilgiris covering
Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka. Others include
the Nanda Devi in Uttarakhand in the Western Himalayas,
the Nokrek in Meghalaya, Manas, and Dibru Saikhowa in
Assam, the Sunderbans in the Gangetic plain in West Bengal,
Similar in Orissa, the Great Nicobar and the Gulf of Mannar in
Tamil Nadu. As per satellite imaging, about 19 percent of the
land area of the country comprise of forests. It has 80
national parks at present, which houses the largest number
of tigers and one-horned rhinos found in the world, Asiatic
lions and a large percent of elephants. Six significant wetland
areas of India have been declared as Ramsar Sites under
the Ramsar Convention. Under the World Heritage
Convention, five natural sites have been declared as World
Heritage Sites.
India accredited the International Convention on Biodiversity
(CBD) on 18 February 1994 and became Party to the
Convention in May 1994. The CBD is an international legal
instrument for fostering conservation and sustainable use of
biological diversity and the fair and equitable sharing of the
benefits arising from commercial and other utilization of
genetic resources. It is the responsibility of The Ministry of
Environment and Forest in India to oversee environmental
policy and procedures and the administration of the national
parks of the country as well. India has worked on creating
landscape conversion that includes wildlife reserves,
communal forest, and some private lands.

All these factors and many more is the reason behind why
India is called a mega biodiversity centre and makes it one of
the seventeen mega biodiversity countries of the world.
Conclusion
With bird eye view of this paper, in our opinion the
biodiversity is not only genes, species, population, community
and ecosystem only but also it refers to productivity,
nutritional status, biocontrol, biofertilizers, bioenergy,
breeding strategies, livelihood, lifestyle, endogenous
knowledge with ex-situ and in-situ conservation. We have a lot
of endogenous species of flora and fauna in all ecosystems
which are important for developing countries particularly
India where economic depend heavily on these resources.
Indias megadiversity is well placed, cultural diversity,
different religions, languages, traditions and festivals,
Ayurveda, Unani, Homeopaths and Herbal preparations
(cosmetics and Pharmaceuticals purposes). They are part of
traditional biodiversity. Many crops like rice sugarcane,
mango, jute, citrus, banana, bazra, jwar etc, arose in India and
spread throughout the world and a large proportion of the
Indian biodiversity is still unexplored.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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