{"id":20654,"date":"2024-02-19T08:22:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-19T02:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=20654"},"modified":"2025-04-06T02:45:02","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T21:15:02","slug":"ponmudi-hills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/ponmudi-hills\/","title":{"rendered":"Ponmudi hills"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About Ponmudi hills<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Ponmudi translates to \u2018Golden Hill\u2019 or \u2018Golden Peak\u2019 is located in the\u00a0state of Kerala.<\/li>\n<li>It is part of the\u00a0Western Ghats mountain range\u00a0that runs parallel to the Arabian Sea and is at an altitude of 1100 metres above sea level.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The hills are a\u00a0part of the Agasthyamalai landscape, at the southernmost tip of the Western Ghats.<\/li>\n<li>These hills are biodiversity-rich, and recently the third species of damselfly discovered from this region.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Key facts about the new species of damselfly<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It is named\u00a0Cliffside Bambootail (Phylloneura rupestris).<\/li>\n<li>It belongs to a group called bambootails, so named because of their long abdomen that resembles bamboo stalks.<\/li>\n<li>It lays eggs in the moss beds in seasonal rills that flow over rock cliffs.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The discovery is significant, because for over 160 years, the genus Phylloneura was considered monotypic, with a single described species, the\u00a0Myristica Bambootail\n<ul>\n<li>Myristica Bambootail\u2019s\u00a0population is associated with myristica swamps, and hence is known by its common name Myristica Bambootail.<\/li>\n<li>It has remained the sole described species of the genus Phylloneura and is considered\u00a0near-threatened as per the\u00a0IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.<\/li>\n<li>It is\u00a0endemic to the Western Ghats and has been recorded only in the area between the\u00a0Nilgiri Hills and Sharavathi Valley, north of the Palghat Gap.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1) What is Western Ghats?<\/h3>\n<p>It is a mountain range that covers an area of 160,000 sq Km in a stretch of 1,600 Km parallel to the western coast of the Indian peninsula. It traverses through the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/sci-tech\/energy-and-environment\/new-species-of-damselfly-discovered-in-ponmudi\/article67852949.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>New species of damselfly discovered in Kerala\u2019s Ponmudi hills<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ponmudi hills is part of the Western Ghats mountain range that runs parallel to the Arabian Sea and is at an altitude of 1100 metres above sea level. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","7":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}