The factors that cause flowering in bamboos remain a botanical mystery. Many causes have been attributed to trigger gregarious flowering in bamboo but it has not been possible to establish their consistency. People believe that famine, death and natural disasters are associated events of bamboo flowering. Death of large populations of bamboos spread over large tracts of forest areas in Asia-Pacific region has been a cause of concern owing to the ecological, social and economic crises that set forth following bamboo flowering. During gregarious flowering, large quantities of seeds are produced. Many animals, particularly rodents feed on these nutritious seeds and reproduce fast to increase their population sizes. Once the seeds are exhausted due to germination, the rats/rodents depend on crops in the vicinity, thus causing famine. Considering the technological, scientific, socio-economic and environmental consequences of bamboo flowering and associated growth of rodent populations, the menace of bamboo flowering remains as a challenge. The book Bamboo flowering and rodent control includes 12 papers representing different dimensions of the subject authored by well-known Indian and Taiwan scientists, is an attempt to address this scientific challenge.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Saroj K. Baril
Dr. S.K. Barik is Professor of Ecology at the Department of Botany, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, and is currently working as the Head of the Department. He is an accomplished ecologist with twenty six years of research experience in the field of Ecology and Natural Resources Management. He is pursuing frontline research in diverse areas of ecology including ecosystem structure and function, ecological modelling, and population and molecular ecology. He served/ is serving as Chairman/Member of several Expert Committees/Task Forces constituted by Ministry of Environment and Forests, Planning Commission, and Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt. of India. He has published eleven books and 70 research papers. He is Member of the Editorial Boards of Tropical Ecology and Journal of Biodiversity. He is a LEAD Fellow, awarded by Leadership in Environment and Development (LEAD) International, Rockefeller Foundation, USA.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Veena Tandon
Dr. Veena Tandon FNASc, MSc and PhD from Panjab University is a Professor of Zoology, serving at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong for the last >30 years as a teacher and researcher of Parasitology. She has studied in depth the worm parasite spectrum in vertebrates of economic and food value in Northeast India, with emphasis on geographical distribution and influence of environmental factors on prevalence and transmission of parasitic infections in the region. She is recipient of the coveted ‘E.K. JanakiAmmal National Award in Animal Taxonomy’ (2006), conferred by Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India.
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