A comprehensive checklist of threatened plants of Meghalaya, Northeast India

Abstract

In this era of rapid biodiversity decline, creating a checklist of threatened taxa is a prerequisite as it apprises the conservationists about the current status of species, thereby enabling the enforcement of necessary measures to prevent them from extinction. The present study was carried out to develop a comprehensive list of threatened species of Meghalaya using both the global and regional lists viz., International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, Red Data Book of Indian Plants and Conservation Assessment and Management Plan. The analysis revealed the presence of 385 plant taxa belonging to 274 genera and 108 families in the state under various threatened categories. The dominant life form consisted of trees (40.26%), followed by herbs (35.84%), shrubs (13.25%), climbers (5.45%), epiphytes (4.94%) and parasites (0.26%). Fabaceae with 34 species was the largest family and Magnolia with 14 species was the dominant genera. The distribution of the threatened species showed that 24 species are exclusively endemic to Meghalaya and 70 species were restricted to Northeastern India, Indo-Burma or the Eastern Himalaya region. The present study has enabled the compilation of data on threatened plants of Meghalaya spread across literature with an update on their distributional area.

Keywords

• Conservation
• Indo–Burma Hotspot
• Protected area
• Threatened species