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Raunkiaerian life-forms in the Atlantic forest and comparisons of life-form spectra among Brazilian main biomes

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Abstract

Life-form spectra are known to vary greatly among different biomes, being largely defined by macroclimates on a global scale. Benign climates usually have biomes with a large proportion of phanerophytes, whereas harsher climates favor life-forms with greater degrees of bud protection. We sampled the flora of a semideciduous Atlantic forest and classified each recorded species in one of the Raunkiaerian life-forms. We then compared the biological spectrum of this seasonal forest with other published spectra of the main Brazilian biomes. We show that each biome has a clear functional spectrum and that the semideciduous Atlantic forest is to some extent functionally similar to Amazonian and Atlantic ombrophilous forests. The relatively moist semideciduous and the ombrophilous forests have biological spectra dominated by phanerophytes. The fire-prone, seasonal “Cerrado” savannas have spectra dominated by both phanerophytes and hemicryptophytes. However, the spectra of the semiarid “Caatinga” woodlands seem to depend on soil type: woodlands on crystalline terrains are dominated by therophytes, whereas those on sedimentary terrains are dominated by both phanerophytes and therophytes. Sedimentary caatingas have spectra whose features are in an intermediate position between those of crystalline caatingas and moist forests. On a continental scale, macroclimate seems to be the most important environmental factor separating different biological spectra, but wildfires in the “Cerrado” and soil differences between crystalline and sedimentary Caatinga woodlands also play an important role in defining the local spectrum on a regional scale.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the owners of Clube de Campo Valinhos, for kindly allowing us to survey the vegetation in their property. We thank the staff of the Plant Science Department at Unicamp, who provided inestimable help to identify plant species during our survey. We are also appreciative of Daniel B. Umada’s valuable help during fieldwork. M.F. Moro thanks the São Paulo Research Foundation (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo—FAPESP 2013/15280-9) for a post-doctorate Grant awarded to him. We are grateful to Dr. Juliano Van Melis, Dr. Leandro Vieira, Dr. Bruno Aranha, and Dr. André Rochelle for kindly providing their inedited floristic data for Ubatuba and Ribeirão Cachoeira forests, allowing us to produce two extra spectra for our analyses. We also would like to thank Professor João Semir for helping to determine the life-forms of species reported on those sites. We thank Janete Silveira da Silva for reviewing the English of the text.

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  1. Departamento de Biologia Vegetal, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Bloco M, Campinas, SP, CEP 13.083-970, Brazil

    Ana Claudia de Meneses Costa, Marcelo Freire Moro & Fernando Roberto Martins

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  1. Ana Claudia de Meneses Costa
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  2. Marcelo Freire Moro
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Correspondence to Marcelo Freire Moro.

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de Meneses Costa, A.C., Moro, M.F. & Martins, F.R. Raunkiaerian life-forms in the Atlantic forest and comparisons of life-form spectra among Brazilian main biomes. Braz. J. Bot 39, 833–844 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40415-016-0281-z

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