Diversity Analysis of Moss-Inhabiting Amoebae from North and North-East India

Ishani Jana, Korak K Chaki, Ashok K Sarkar, Kamales K Misra

Abstract


The present work is designed to study biodiversity of moss dwelling testate amoeba from 12 states of North andNorth-East India covering 6 biotopes. This study analyses the data, which were earlier published by Chattopadhyayand Das (2003), hypothesizing that occurrence of testate amoeba is dependent on its microhabitat i.e. biotope andmoss genus. In the present analysis 5 biotopes namely soil, wall, rock, tree and tree-associate were considered.Different similarity measures (Sørensen’s similarity index and Bray-Curtis similarity matrix) reveal that testateamoebae of soil, rock and wall biotopes are closely similar, while rock and tree-associate biotopes exhibit minimumsimilarity. It is found that ~13% of testate amoeba species were recorded from five biotopes whereas 36% wereregistered from single biotope. It is further analysed that 63.2% species of testaceans can colonise a wide range ofmoss genera. This shows that association of testate amoeba and moss genera are not specific but random. Diversityindex is highest in rock biotope, while evenness measure is highest in tree-associates and minimum in rock biotope.The rock biotope forms a separate cluster in the multivariate analysis that shows maximum similarity level (73.5%)between soil and wall. It can be inferred from the present analysis that among 27 moss genera, Fissidens seems tobe the most preferred habitat and the rock biotope provides ideal habitat condition for both moss genera andtestaceans.

Keywords


Biodiversity, Biotope, Bootstrap, Moss, Multivariate analysis, Testate amoebae

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