Study area
The study was conducted in the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot of
southern India. The landscape (12.17°N, 75.80°E), located in Kodagu
district of Karnataka state, is classified as mid-elevation evergreen
forests (Pascal, 1986). Elevation spanned 650-1100 m ASL and mean annual
precipitation ranged from ca. 2400-3800 mm across sites. The
region has well-drained clayey and loamy type soils (Anonymous, 1998).
The forests here were fragmented ca. 100 years ago with the
expansion of coffee plantations, paddy fields and human settlements. For
the last 40 years, both contiguous and fragmented forests were legally
protected against land-use change, extraction and hunting. Local
communities also protect fragments from conversion due to their cultural
value as sacred groves (Osuri and Sankaran, 2016b).