Preliminary Attempts to Conserve Bryophytes in Lowland Forests of Sri Lanka: A Case Study at Yagirala Forest Reserve

Bryophytes were the first dwellers of the land plant history and play a vital role in thedynamics of the forest ecosystems such as water flow regulation and nutrient cycling.Considerable efforts on surveying and taxonomic studies of bryoflora in Sri Lanka was donein the early and mid-19th century by foreign scientists and there is a huge gap for severaldecades till late 1990s and no proper systematic survey of bryoflora in lowland forests in SriLanka has been carried out in the recent past. Sri Lanka is a biodiversity hotspot and it has arich and diverse tropical bryoflora in the lowland and highland natural wet -moist forests.Yagirala forest reserve is a lowland tropical rainforest situated in the low country wet zone.Many floristic researches on angiosperms have been carried out but there is no systematicsurvey has been carried out to study the cryptogamic plants in the forest. Hence this is thefirst attempt to study and identify distribution of the bryoflora at Yagirala forest reserve. Thebryophyte diversity in three main ecosystems in the forest including the primary forest,secondary forest and the forest associated with the Pinus plantation was studied. Ten (10)different families of mosses (including 12 genera, 16 species), Six (06) families of leafyliverworts (including 12 genera, 14 species) and 03 families of simple thalloid liverworts(including 03 genera, 03 species) were found. All species records were mapped and seemedto be new species records to Sri Lanka. DNA samples were collected for further barcodingstudies and voucher specimens were prepared. A comparison of the species diversity in eachmajor habitat type was studied and some anthropogenic and natural threats to the nativebryoflora in the forest were studied. Further intensive research work is needed to prepare acomplete checklist of bryoflora in the Yagirala Forest reserve and the final output of theproject will be developing a user-friendly pocket guide to study the common bryophytes inthe forest and this will open a novel avenue to initiate the conservation and IUCN redlistingof lowland bryoflora in Sri Lanka.Keywords: Bryophytes, Preliminary survey, Yagirala Forest Reserve, Conservation