Abstract
Accelerated degradation of the wetlands and fragmentation of surrounding vegetation in the Andean–Orinoco Piedmont are the main threats to diversity and ecological integrity of these ecosystems; however, information on this topic is of limited availability. In this region, we evaluated the value of 37 lentic wetlands as reservoirs of woody and aquatic plants and analyzed diversity and changes in species composition within and among groups defined according to management given by: (1) type (swamps, heronries, rice fields, semi-natural lakes, constructed lakes and fish farms) and (2) origins (natural, mixed and artificial). A total of 506 plant species were recorded: 80% woody and 20% aquatic. Of these, 411 species (81%) were considered species typical of the area (Meta Piedmont distribution). Diversity patterns seem to be driven by high landscape heterogeneity and wetland management. The fish farms presented the highest diversity of woody plants, while swamps ranked highest for aquatic plant diversity. Regarding wetland origin, the artificial systems were the most diverse, but natural wetlands presented the highest diversity of typical species and can therefore be considered representative ecosystems at the regional scale. Our results suggest that lentic wetlands act as refuges for native vegetation of Meta Piedmont forest, hosting 55% of the woody of Piedmont species and 29% of the aquatic species of Orinoco basin. The wetlands showed a high species turnover and the results indicated that small wetlands (mean ± SD: size = 11 ± 18.7 ha), with a small area of surrounding forest (10 ± 8.6 ha) supported high local and regional plant diversity. To ensure long-term conservation of lentic wetlands, it is necessary to develop management and conservation strategies that take both natural and created wetlands into account.
Highlights
The vegetation associated with wetlands is one of the most distinctive characteristics of aquatic ecosystems (Burton, Tiner & Gene, 2009; Mitsch & Gosselink, 2015)
In this study we evaluate the role of natural and created lentic wetlands as a refuge of plant diversity of the Meta Piedmont biome, and the influence of the wetland management in the diversity of woody and aquatic plants, focusing on two questions: (1) are lentic wetlands, despite its size, refuges of plant diversity; and, (2) how do the diversity and composition of plants associated with lentic wetlands change according to their management given by type and origin? We expect that wetland type has a strong influence on local and regional plant diversity, that natural wetlands retain the greatest plant diversity of Andean Piedmont and that lentic wetlands are potential reservoirs of plant diversity
The total area of the 37 wetlands studied (424 ha) and their forest area (435 ha) associated represent less than 1% of wetland coverage in the Orinoco region and 1% of the Meta Piedmont tropical humid zonobiome (Romero-Ruiz et al, 2004), our results indicated that these wetlands make a considerable contribution to local and regional diversity of woody and aquatic plants
Summary
The vegetation associated with wetlands is one of the most distinctive characteristics of aquatic ecosystems (Burton, Tiner & Gene, 2009; Mitsch & Gosselink, 2015). The Andean Piedmont of the Colombian Orinoco river basin once formed a continuous corridor of vegetation between the Eastern cordillera of the Andes, and the savannah ecosystems of the Llanos Orientales (Bates, 1948; Molano, 1998) This was a typical rainforest with swamplands that formed and maintained multiple wetlands (Bates, 1948) within the region known as ‘‘Villavicencio pleistocene refuge’’ (Hernández et al, 1992). The Andean–Orinoco Piedmont has been heavily fragmented (Etter, McAlpine & Possingham, 2008), and significant portions of the remaining vegetation are concentrated around wetlands In this region, the natural wetlands (i.e., swamps and diverse flooded lands) and their surrounding vegetation have been reduced as a result of the expansion of the agricultural frontier, the urbanization and changes of land cover (i.e., Romero-Ruiz et al, 2004; Romero-Ruiz et al, 2009). Lentic wetlands are distributed as isolated patches within an urban and rural landscape matrix, forming islands of aquatic ecosystems surrounded by Meta Piedmont vegetation, partly connected by riparian and flooded forests
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