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Measuring productivity of a palm species: a proposal to standardize fruit quantification methods

  • Ecology & Biogeography - Original Article
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Abstract

Fruit productivity of plant populations is an important variable in phenological and demographic studies, partly because it involves the quantification of total fruit production per infructescence (TFP). Therefore, a standardized fruit quantification method allows for comparisons between different studies. In this paper, we describe a reliable method to quantify TFP of Euterpe edulis Mart, a key stone species which provides great number of fruits to the frugivore assembly through the whole year. A total of 28 infructescences were collected: 10 in Restinga de Jurubatiba National Park and 18 in Serra dos Órgãos National Park, both in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Guided by procedures already described in previews studies, three metrics to compose a standardized method to estimate TFP were formulated. Based on a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) selection to assess the best variables to estimate TFP, a fourth metric was formulated. Finally, the four following metrics were studied: TFPc (manual counting all fruits); TFPm (total fruit mass divided by mean fruit mass); TFPr (mean fruit produced per rachilla multiplied by number of rachillae); and TFPd (function of the best fitted GLMM). Low coefficients of variation highlight that fruit mass has a good repeatability within fruits produced by one infructescence, unlike the number of fruits produced by rachillae. Furthermore, TFPm has accurate and precise results when compared to the real TFP, and the low sampling effort demanded by this metric makes it ideal to integrate a standardized method to quantify the fruit production and be replicated in several habitat types.

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Notes

  1. The pulp of fruits from infructescences collected at RJ were already attacked by fungi by the time we begun processing the material. In this case, we were able to count the fruits and test the other metrics, but as the fruit mass was compromised, we could not test TFPm using the infructescences harvested at RJ.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Camila de Barros for helping us with the GLMMs and Verônica Marques and Adilson Pintor for helping us with fieldwork. We would like to thank the Long-term Research Program (Programa de Pesquisa de Longa Duração PELD—CNPq) Finance Code 441589/2016-2, for funding the entire project, and Professor Marcus Vinicius Vieira (PELD Coordinator) for the financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Curso de Bacharelado em Ciências Ambientais, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

    Guilherme Gama

  2. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia, Departamento de Ecologia, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

    Guilherme Gama & Rita de Cássia Quitete Portela

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  1. Guilherme Gama
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  2. Rita de Cássia Quitete Portela
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GG collected and processed the material and performed data sampling and analyses. GG and RCQP contributed to writing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Guilherme Gama.

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Gama, G., Portela, R.d.C.Q. Measuring productivity of a palm species: a proposal to standardize fruit quantification methods. Braz. J. Bot 46, 731–741 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40415-023-00903-x

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