Grazing of Herbivories Affecting Plant Growth: A Case Study of Water Buffaloes Grazing on Red Indian Water Lily at Thale Noi Wildlife Sanctuary, Southern Thailand

Abstract

In this study, we investigated how buffaloes grazing on water lily influenced water lily leaf at Thale Noi Wildlife Sanctuary, southern Thailand. We estimated water buffalo population size, and measured water quality parameters and water lily leave sizes with present and absent of water buffaloes. Water buffalo population size were estimated by using aerial photographs from multi-rotor drones at five study sites. Photographs were taken at 50 m above ground. We measured water quality parameters (i.e. water temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen (DO), total dissolved solid (TDS) and electric conductivity (EC)) at two sites: site with buffaloes present and site with buffaloes absent. We collected 30 water lily leaves per study site at three study sites based on distances further away from water buffalo herds: short distance (100 m), intermediate distance (200 m) and long distance (300 m) from a buffalo herd of 200 buffaloes.We took photographs of water lily leaf with scale, measured leaf radius and calculated the leaf area with the Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended software. Our results showed that there were five water buffalo herds in Thale Noi Water Sanctuary with a total of 176 males, 243 females and 105 juveniles. There were two herds that female biased and three herds with equal sex ratios. In areas with buffaloes present, water temperature, pH, DO, water lily radius and leaf area were higher but TDS and EC measurements were lower than areas without buffaloes. This indicates that water lilies and water quality parameters were influenced by water buffaloes.