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Woody islands in South Brazilian coastal grasslands: effects of spatial variations on the structure of plant communities

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Abstract

Brazilian costal sand plains (restingas) are widely known for their many vegetation types, often responding to small landform variations which in turn cause quite distinct soil conditions. One interesting and still poorly known physiognomy is the woody patches or islands dispersed over sparse to dense herbaceous matrixes. Our main objective in this paper was to assess how spatial variables, as area and volume of the patches, affect the floristic composition and the community structure of woody patches in south Brazilian coastal grasslands. We analyzed 48 woody patches in four study sites in central coastal Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Each woody island was measured, and all vascular plant species above 30 cm were registered and quantified according to an abundance scale. Each species received values from one to five depending on the occurrence in five possible segments of each woody patch. Woody patches varied roughly between 4 and 204 m2. The floristic inventory resulted in 102 species in 49 families, Myrtaceae and Bromeliaceae being the most diversified, with eight and seven species, respectively. A total of 12 life-forms were recognized, the most diversified being trees or potential trees (27 species), herb–subshrub (17), climbers (20), and epiphytes (15). Species richness increased significantly with the size of woody islands, corroborating one of the basic premises of Theory of Island Biogeography. Diversity and abundance of life-forms in the contrary were not significantly different along the different sizes. The comparison of all woody islands from the four study sites indicated a higher similarity within each site, suggesting regional variation in soil properties, past disturbances, or landscape contexts.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank several botanists who helped us with valuable species identifications or for providing essential information for the correct statement of scientific names: Greta Aline Dettke, Guilherme Dubal dos Santos Seger, João André Jarenkow, João Larocca, Mara Rejane Ritter, Maria Salete Marchioretto, Martin Grings, Priscila Porto Alegre Ferreira, and Silvia Teresinha Sfoggia Miotto.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratório de Fitoecologia e Fitogeografia, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Botânica - UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

    Ana Boeira Porto & Edilaine Andrade Melo

  2. Laboratório de Fitoecologia e Fitogeografia, Departamento de Botânica - UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

    Jorge Luiz Waechter

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  1. Ana Boeira Porto
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  2. Edilaine Andrade Melo
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  3. Jorge Luiz Waechter
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Contributions

ABP as part of the author’s master’s dissertation, this author was present in all stages of the work, from the project to the field work, data analysis, interpretation of results, and writing. EAM contributed to the field research, assisted in the statistical analyses, the bibliographic review, and the revision of the text. JLW was important in the field research, in the definition of the work methodology, in the identification of species, and helped in the statistical analysis, and revision of the text.

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Correspondence to Ana Boeira Porto.

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Porto, A.B., Melo, E.A. & Waechter, J.L. Woody islands in South Brazilian coastal grasslands: effects of spatial variations on the structure of plant communities. Braz. J. Bot 42, 295–305 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40415-019-00527-0

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