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Article History

Received: 21 December 2025

Accepted: 13 March 2026

First Online: 4 April 2026

Declarations

:

: No special permission was required to collect plant specimens from the polluted site, Motijheel-Sayedabad roadside area, as it is not designated as a protected area. Sampling at the control site, the National Botanical Garden, was conducted with permission from the relevant authorities. All sampling procedures complied with the institutional guidelines of the University of Dhaka and the national biodiversity regulations of Bangladesh. This study did not involve human participants or animals.

: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

: Sampling was conducted in accordance with relevant institutional, national, and international guidelines. None of the selected species is listed as threatened under the International Union for Conservation of Nature IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Leaf samples of the following species were collected from control and polluted sites of Dhaka city, Bangladesh: i) Artocarpus heterophyllus Lam. (1789), ii) Ficus benghalensis L. (1753), iii) Ficus religiosa L. (1753), iv) Mimusops elengi L. (1753), v) Polyalthia longifolia (Sonn.) Thwaites (1864), vi) Syzygium cumini (L.) Skeels (1912), vii) Swietenia mahagoni (L.) Jacq. (1760), viii) Terminalia arjuna (Roxb. ex DC.) Wight & Arn. (1834), ix) Terminalia catappa L. (1753). The plant materials were identified by Dr. Mohammad Ataur Rahman, Department of Botany, University of Dhaka. Voucher specimens were deposited at the Ecology and Environment Laboratory Herbarium, University of Dhaka, with accession numbers: Control site specimens: EELH3021–EELH3029 and Polluted site specimens: EELH3030–EELH3038.