IJEP 39(3): 259-262 : Vol. 39 Issue. 3 (March 2019)
1. NSRIT College, Department of Basic Sciences and Humanities, Visakhapatnam – 531 173
2. LB College, Department of Environmental Studies, Visakhapatnam – 560 029
3. Andhra University, Department of Environment Sciences, Visakhapatnam – 530 003
Abstract
Habitat diversity and vegetation communities of Lake Kondakarla, Visakhapatnam district, Andhra Pradesh were studied between December 2014 to January 2017. The lake environments harbour four distinct types of habitat diversity : wet meadows of lake fringes, littoral shallow areas, limnetic open waters and euphotic deep water areas. A total of 24 plant species belongs to 15 families consisting 4-species of emergent forms, 6-species of floating-leaved, 9-species of free-floating and 5-species of the submerged category were enumerated from Kondakarla lake habitats. Relative abundance of plant species indicates that emergent species (84.60%) and free-floating macrophytes (52.12%) were the dominant group rather than floating-leaved (45.43%) and submerged hydrophytes (36.50%) in lake habitats. Maturity index (MI) of plant communities shows that vegetation communities ecological succession was highest at littoral (42.75) and limnetic (27.33) habitats.
Keywords
Kondakarla lake, Habitat diversity, Vegetation community, Hydrophytes, Maturity index
