More at http://www.sanctuaryasia.com | In The Field
Ahimaz, long–time employee of WWF-
India, was the generalist and ended
up drawing up lists of birds, mammals,
reptiles, butterfl ies, dragonfl ies and
spiders – though only he can describe
his unique identifi cation methods.
S. R. Ganesh, from the Madras Snake
Park was, and continues to be, a zealous
gatherer and interpreter of fi eld data
concerning herpetofauna. As for me,
I concentrated simply on fi sh. Whilst
Preston and Ganesh focused on the
Kiliyur Valley and its environs, I went
further afi eld, sampling sites as far
away as Manjakuttai and Puthur, which
though not very far as the crow fl ies
necessitated scores of kilometres along
winding ghat roads. This gave us a fair
idea of the ichthyofauna of streams
draining into the Vappady and Vaniyar
tributaries of the Kaveri river (http://
dx.doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o3247.7595-
601). A unique feature of the hill
streams of the Eastern Ghats, unlike the
Western Ghats, is that the fi sh diversity
is rather low – we encountered only 18
native species compared to an earlier
survey in the nearby Javadi Hills that
revealed just 14. Of the 18, only two
occurred in the Javadis, which shows
how diverse ichthyofaunal communities
are, even between hill streams that
fl ow in close proximity to each other.
This may be because the hill ranges
of the Eastern Ghats are disjunctive
and display a total absence of Malayan
elements and lack endemicity, unlike
the near continuous Western Ghats,
with distinct similarities to southeast
Asian elements with a large number
of endemics – so integral to the ‘Hora
Hypothesis’ of the 1940s.A Mottled Wood Owl
based on a photograph
by Dr. Nishith Kumar.Notable
fi sh fi ndings
were the Kaveri
carp Cirrhinus
cirrhosus and
the Indian butter
catfi sh Ompok
bimaculatus.
According to the
IUCN Red List
of Threatened
Species, the
former is listed
as Vulnerable and
the latter as Near
Threatened. Another
interesting fi nding was a
Danio, tentatively named
Devario cf. aequipinnatus,
which showed overlapping characters
(scalation) with both Devario