Going extinct before being discovered? New lichen fungi from a small fragment of the vanishing Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil

Thamires Almeida Pereira,Marcela Eugenia Da Silva Cáceres,Lidiane Alves Dos Santos,Paula De Oliveira Passos,Robert Lücking

doi:10.1590/1676-0611-bn-2017-0445

Thamires Almeida Pereira, Marcela Eugenia Da Silva Cáceres + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1590/1676-0611-bn-2017-0445

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Abstract

Abstract In the frame of an ongoing lichen inventory of Atlantic Rainforest remnants in Northeast Brazil, five new species of Graphidaceae were discovered in a small forest fragment, Mata do Cipó, in Sergipe state, the smallest state of Brazil and among those with the highest deforestation rate in the country. An additional new species had already been collected in Panama before and was now also found in the Mata do Cipó and is described here as well. In total, 40 species of Graphidaceae are reported for this remnant, including a large number of taxa indicative of well-preserved rainforest. The new species are: Fissurina atlantica T.A. Pereira, M. Cáceres & Lücking, sp. nov., Graphis subaltamirensis Passos, M. Cáceres & Lücking, sp. nov., Ocellularia cipoensis L.A. Santos, M. Cáceres & Lücking, sp. nov., O. sosma T.A. Pereira, M. Cáceres & Lücking, sp. nov., O. submordenii Lücking, sp. nov. (also known from Panama), and Pseudochapsa aptrootiana M. Cáceres, T.A. Pereira & Lücking, sp. nov. The findings are discussed in the context of the strong fragmentation of the Atlantic Rainforest, with individual remnants apparently serving as refugia for residual populations of rare species of lichen fungi that were more widely distributed in the past, but currently seem to occur only in isolated fragments.

Highlights

In the past centuries, extensive and continuing land use change has led to the so-called ‘sixth mass extinction’ or ‘holocene extinction’ (Leakey & Lewin 1992; Wake & Vredenburg 2008; Barnosky et al 2011)
Restricted to Brazil but extending into Argentina and Uruguay, and within Brazil found in 17 states, the Atlantic Rainforest originally covered approximately 13% of the Brazilian territory, while its current extension has been reduced to about 1%, with a high level of degradation and fragmentation of the remaining forest (Brooks & Balmford 1996; Ranta et al 1998; Ribeiro et al 2009; Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica & Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Especiais (INPE) 2009, 2016; Tabarelli et al 2010)
In the state of Sergipe, the smallest state in Brazil, nearly half of the territory belongs to the domain of the Atlantic Rainforest, but only about 11% of its original cover remains as more or less natural areas, dispersed into small fragments in numerous municipalities (Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica & INPE, 2016)

Summary

Introduction

Extensive and continuing land use change has led to the so-called ‘sixth mass extinction’ or ‘holocene extinction’ (Leakey & Lewin 1992; Wake & Vredenburg 2008; Barnosky et al 2011). The present work aimed at an inventory of Graphidaceae in the small Atlantic Rainforest fragment of the Mata de Cipó in the municipalities of Capela and Siriri in the state of Sergipe, northeast Brazil.

Results

Conclusion