Floristic composition and similarity of 15 hectares in Central Amazon, Brazil
Kátia Emidio da Silva1, Sebastião Venancio Martins2, Carlos Antonio Alvares Soares Ribeiro2, Nerilson Terra Santos3, Celso Paulo de Azevedo4, Francisca Dionizia de Almeida Matos5 & Ieda Leão do Amaral5
Abstract
The Amazon region is one of the most diverse areas in the world. Research on high tropical forest diversity brings up relevant contributions to understand the mechanisms that result and support such diversity. In the present study we describe the species composition and diversity of 15 one-ha plots in the Amazonian terra firme dense forest in Brazil, and compare the floristic similarity of these plots with other nine one-ha plots. The 15 plots studied were randomly selected from permanent plots at the Embrapa Experimental site, Amazonas State in 2005. The diversity was analysed by using species richness and Shannon’s index, and by applying the Sorensen’s index for similarity and unweighted pair-group average (UPGMA) as clustering method. Mantel test was performed to study whether the differences in species composition between sites could be explained by the geographic distance between them. Overall, we identified 8 771 individuals, 264 species and 51 plant families. Most of the species were concentrated in few families and few had large number of individuals. Families presenting the highest species richness were Fabaceae (Faboideae: 22spp., Mimosoideae: 22spp.), Sapotaceae: 22spp., Lecythidaceae: 15 and Lauraceae: 13. Burseraceae had the largest number of individuals with 11.8% of the total. The ten most abundant species were: Protium hebetatum (1 037 individuals), Eschweilera coriacea (471), Licania oblongifolia (310), Pouteria minima (293), Ocotea cernua (258), Scleronema micranthum (197), Eschweilera collina (176), Licania apelata (172), Naucleopsis caloneura (170) and Psidium araca (152), which represented 36.5% of all individuals. Approximately 49% of species had up to ten individuals and 13% appeared only once in all sampled plots, showing a large occurrence of rare species. Our study area is on a forest presenting a high tree species diversity with Shannon’s diversity index of 4.49. The dendrogram showed two groups of plots with low similarity between them (less than 0.25), and the closer the plots were one to another, more similar in species composition (Mantel R=0.3627, p<0.01). The 15 plots in our study area share more than 50% of their species composition and represent the group of plots that have the shortest distance between each other. Overall, our results highlight the high local and regional heterogeneity of environments in terra firme forests, and the high occurrence of rare species, which should be considered in management and conservation programs in the Amazon rainforest, in order to maintain its structure on the long run. Rev. Biol. Trop. 59 (4): 1927-1938. Epub 2011 December 01.
Key words: forest composition, Central Amazonian, forest ecology, floristic similarity, diversity, terra firme, upland dense forest.
Resumen
Palabras clave: composición boscosa, Amazonía Central, ecología forestal, similitud florística, diversidad, terra firme, bosque denso de tierras altas.
The Brazilian Amazon region occupies over half of all Brazilian territory and approximately 65% of its vegetation cover is classified as terra firme forests, which is characterized by high tree species diversity, presenting a low number of individuals, high floristic dissimilarity among adjacent plots, with large variation in floristic similarity (10-36%) (Prance et al. 1976, Ferreira & Prance 1998, Lima Filho et al. 2001, ter Steege et al. 2006, Oliveira et al. 2008). Therefore, several environmental conditions and geographical distances among areas at different scales may play an important role in floristic variations across the Amazon region.
The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse the floristic composition and diversity in the large survey of 15 1-ha plots in terra firme tropical rainforest at the Embrapa Experimental site, in central Amazon, Manaus, Amazonas State and to compare their floristic composition with other nine plots spread over the Amazonas State, by analysing the influence of the geographical distance on the floristic similarity between plots across Amazonas State, Brazil.
Materials and methods
Study site: The study area is located in a terra firme dense forest of Central Amazon, at the Embrapa Experimental site, Central Amazon, Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil, with a total area of 400ha. This was subdivided into one-ha permanent plots, belonging to the forest management project developed in the Amazon region in Brazil. The climate is tropical, type "Am" (Koppen classification), with a mean annual rainfall ranging from 1 355 to 2 839mm. The mean annual temperature ranges from 25.6°C to 27.6°C, with relative humidity from 84 to 90% (RADAM 1978). On a broad scale, soils are fairly homogeneous throughout the stands; heavy-textured dystrophic yellow latosol predominates, covered mainly by dense forest with emergent trees (IBGE 1999), but with a low degree of local variation in topographic and edaphic conditions. The upland areas are plateaus formed by Tertiary sediments that cover the largest portion of the Amazon sedimentary basin, shaped into landforms dissected in extensive interfluvial plateaus and hills (Regis 1993). ]]>Results
The number of individuals per plot ranged from 495 to 682, with SD equal to 56.4 (Table 2), showing a great variability in the abundance of species measured in all the 15 plots of the study area. Figure 4 shows the species distribution by class of number of individuals within each sampled plot. Thirtyfour species (13%) appeared only once when we summed the abundances over all 15 plots, showing the large occurrence of rare species. Plots 39 and 165 had no occurrence of species with only one individual.
The Shannon-Wiener’s diversity index varied between 3.8 and 4.22 among the 15 plots (Table 2).
For the 15 EMB plots the distances between pair of plots varied from a minimum of 100m to a maximum of 1 657m (from "EMB39" to "EMB103" plot). The other nine plots had larger distances between pairs, varying from a minimum of 100m to a maximum of 918km (from "JURUA" to "ITAP" plots). The Mantel test, carried out to study the association between differences in species composition and geographic distances among plots, showed positive and significant correlation when all sites were analysed (Fig. 6, R=0.3627, p<0.01). For our 15 EMB plots we also found a significant correlation (R=0.4012, p<0.001). However, the nine plots used to compare with our 15plots, showed no significant correlation between floristic similarity and geographical distances, when analysed alone (R=0.3049, p>0.05).
Discussion
]]> Floristic composition and diversity: Alike many studies carried out in Amazonian terra firme forests, our study area had most species concentrated in few families. Also, the larger number of individuals was concentrated in a small number of species just as found in other papers (Rankin-de-Merona 1987, Phillips et al. 1994, Milliken 1998, Amaral et al. 2000, ter Steege 2000, Lima Filho et al. 2001, Oliveira & Amaral 2004, Oliveira et al. 2008). The ten most abundant species had 36.5% of the total number of individuals identified and were found along the 15 sampled plots, with 100% of frequency. Besides, the families with the highest species richness were not the ones which had the largest number of individuals (Amaral et al. 2000). Burseraceae with low species richness, not included amongst the families presenting the highest species richness had the largest number of individuals. However, we found other studies showing that there might be a relation between richness and abundance in families (Tello 1995, Oliveira et al. 2008). The predominance of families in terra firme tropical rainforests in central Amazonian, such as Sapotaceae, Lecythidaceae and Burseraceae (Oliveira & Amaral 2005, Oliveira et al. 2008, Coronado et al. 2009) and also in the present study, is noteworthy. This information has been helpful in dynamic studies aiming to measure the changes in composition and structure in forest communities by several sources of changes.It seems that the environmental heterogeneity and distance played effect in separating plots, which could be observed for the "ZF2B" and "JURUA" plots, once the former plot is located at the base position in the topography and the "JURUA" is the farthest plot located in other watershed, probably having different features when compared to the others. Despite the positive correlation between geographical distance and species composition, the Mantel coefficient was not significant. Through the dendrogram analysis, we could better see the tendency of adjacent plots sharing more species, like the plots ZF2P and ZF2V, which are close to each other (100m apart).
Acknowledgments
We thank the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA) for the financial support, and the Federal University of Viçosa for the opportunity to accomplish the study and the data analysis and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).
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