Abstract
The Cerrado Biome is considered one of the world's biodiversity hotspots because of its rich biodiversity, the high level of endemism and the increasing threat. The Cerrado is composed by a mosaic of different vegetation types, including physiognomies that vary from grasslands (campo limpo) to savannas (typical cerrado or cerrado sensu stricto) and cerrado woodlands (cerradão). However, the factors that determine the composition of the Cerrado's flora and the structure of the physiognomies that compose this biome are still poorly understood. Here, we investigate the influence of the chemical and granulometric properties of the soil and the effect of geographic distance on the occurrence and abundance of woody species in three Cerrado phytophysiognomies - cerrado woodland (cerradão), dense cerrado savanna and typical cerrado savanna - in the Cerrado-Amazon transition. We tested the hypothesis that the edaphic characteristics and geographic space determine the species composition and the structure of the woody vegetation of these three phytophysiognomies. We demonstrate that the dissimilarities in the structure and composition of the three sites were determined more by space (13% of explanation) than edaphic properties (1%), but primarily by the interaction between these two factors (26%). We conclude that, in situations where the chemical and granulometric properties of the soil are relatively homogeneous, as we found in the present study, geographic distance between sites has a greater influence than variation in the substrate's properties on modelling the occurrence and abundance of the woody plant species in the Cerrado.
Highlights
The high plant diversity of the Cerrado, with approximately 12,350 species catalogued by Mendonça et al (2008), and 12,097 Angiosperms, 269 ferns and Lycophytes and 478 Bryophytes catalogued by Zappi et al (2015), Prado et al (2015) and Costa and Peralta (2015), has been attributed to the considerable environmental heterogeneity of this biome (Felfili et al, 2008)
The use of soil categories considering the saturation of bases and aluminum, acidity and texture was not sufficient to distinguish the soils of the three phytophysiognomies surveyed in the present study
The simple classification of the soils does not appear to resolve questions related to the factors that determine the establishment of these phytophysiognomies in a given area or the variation in composition/structure observed in the vegetation types, as shown by the RDA
Summary
The high plant diversity of the Cerrado, with approximately 12,350 species catalogued by Mendonça et al (2008), and 12,097 Angiosperms, 269 ferns and Lycophytes and 478 Bryophytes catalogued by Zappi et al (2015), Prado et al (2015) and Costa and Peralta (2015), has been attributed to the considerable environmental heterogeneity of this biome (Felfili et al, 2008). The vegetation of the Cerrado Biome is dominated by savannas on well-drained and deep, but dystrophic soils (Ribeiro and Walter, 2008; Reatto et al, 2008). The cerrado woodland, known locally as cerradão, is well-developed physiognomy of the Cerrado It has, a typical forest-type structure, but its flora is composed predominantly by savanna species (Ratter et al, 1973; Eiten, 1972; Oliveira-Filho and Ratter, 2002; Ribeiro and Walter, 2008). The cerrado woodland occurs on well-drained soils, which can be either dystrophic or mesotrophic (Ratter et al, 1973; Ribeiro and Walter, 2008)
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