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Geographical patterns of terrestrial herbs: a new component in planning the conservation of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

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Abstract

The Brazilian Atlantic Forest (sensu lato) is constituted by Dense Ombrophilous Forest, Mixed Ombrophilous Forest and Seasonal Semideciduous Forest, in which tree species are distributed in gradients, whichever latitude, longitude, or altitude is considered. We investigated whether herb species living on the floor of these forests would have the same geographic distribution pattern. If tree and herb-layer species have coincident distribution patterns, the same conservation units can conserve both species sets; otherwise, specific conservation actions should be taken. We built a presence/absence matrix of 803 terrestrial native species in 80 surveys across the southern and southeastern Brazilian Atlantic Forest. We performed UPGMA, CA and RDA multivariate analyses in order to investigate the distribution patterns. The high degree of agreement among the analyses led us to assume that the geographic distribution of the herb-layer flora occurs as gradients among three main floristic groups: Tropical Ombrophilous forests (mostly lowland forests), Subtropical Ombrophilous forests (mostly montane and upper-montane forests in lower latitudes and sub-montane and lowland forests in higher latitudes, i.e., where temperature is lower), and Seasonal Semideciduous forests (with a marked dry season). Based on different patterns and processes between herbs and trees, and in order to encompass the highest flora diversity, we highlight the importance of creating more reserves in each one of the three main floristic groups of herb-layer species in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.

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Acknowledgments

We thank CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) for the Doctorate and Master scholarships granted to the first and second authors. The authors are grateful to the São Paulo Research Foundations (FAPESP Grant #2001/05146-6) and Brazilian Council for Research and Technologic Development (CNPq Grant #479084/2007-6) for financial support. We also thank Pedro V. Eisenlohr and Ary Teixeira de Oliveira-Filho for the invitation to this special issue.

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Author notes

  1. Leandro Tavares Azevedo Vieira

    Present address: Herbarium MACK, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Rua Piauí, 181. 1st Floor, São Paulo, SP, 01241-001, Brazil

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ecology Graduate Course, Institute of Biology, University of Campinas – UNICAMP, P.O. Box 6109, Campinas, SP, 13083-970, Brazil

    Leandro Tavares Azevedo Vieira

  2. Plant Ecology Graduate Course, Institute of Biology, University of Campinas – UNICAMP, P.O. Box 6109, Campinas, SP, 13083-970, Brazil

    Rodrigo Trassi Polisel

  3. Seção de Ecologia Florestal, Instituto Florestal, Rua do Horto 931, São Paulo, SP, 02377-000, Brazil

    Natália Macedo Ivanauskas

  4. Department of Plant Biology, Institute of Biology, University of Campinas – UNICAMP, P.O. Box 6109, Campinas, SP, 13083-970, Brazil

    George John Shepherd, Kikyo Yamamoto & Fernando Roberto Martins

  5. Department of Botany, Institute of Biosciences, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul – UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS, 91501-970, Brazil

    Jorge Luiz Waechter

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  1. Leandro Tavares Azevedo Vieira
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Correspondence to Leandro Tavares Azevedo Vieira.

Additional information

Communicated by Jefferson Prado, Pedro V. Eisenlohr and Ary T. de Oliveira-Filho.

Electronic supplementary material

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Supplementary material 1 (DOC 276 kb). Appendix 1: List of Brazilian Atlantic Forest sites compared in this study

10531_2015_967_MOESM2_ESM.xls

Supplementary material 2 (XLS 223 kb). Appendix 2: Floristic matrix with 73 sites as objects and 368 species as descriptors

10531_2015_967_MOESM3_ESM.xls

Supplementary material 3 (XLS 36 kb). Appendix 3: Environmental matrix with 73 sites and 10 environmental variables from WorldClim 1.4 database (Hijmans et al. 2005)

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Vieira, L.T.A., Polisel, R.T., Ivanauskas, N.M. et al. Geographical patterns of terrestrial herbs: a new component in planning the conservation of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Biodivers Conserv 24, 2181–2198 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-015-0967-8

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