Abstract
The Brazilian Pantanal is an extensive wetland with heterogeneous habitats, primarily due to the river-floodplain system and plants with differential adaptations and reproductive strategies. Factors such as altitude, distance among plant formations, and flood pulse must be considered to better understand its diversity. Aiming to assess the influence of biogeographic patterns in this system, we analyzed the floristic composition of six areas along the Paraguay River, including residual relieves, verifying the pattern of similarity, and effects of distance and altitude. We recorded 356 species in 87 families, mostly perennial (75%), and some annuals (15%) and pluriannuals (5%). Herbaceous plants were the most represented (48%), followed by arboreal (23%), shrubby (15%) and epiphytic (14%) habits, only 12% being endemic to Brazil. The studied areas showed low floristic similarity, but higher resemblance of species between neighboring areas, and no relation with altitude. The upper Paraguay River is diverse, with high spatial variability of species, predominantly perennial. The river-floodplain connectivity may be a determinant factor in species richness and occurrence of endemic species.
Highlights
Aquatic plants (Scremin-Dias 2000, Scremin-Dias et al 2011)
We carried out this work in six vegetation formations along the Paraguay River, addressing the following questions: (i) Do areas connected during flood periods differ in floristic similarity? (ii) Is there a pattern of floristic composition associated with altitude? (iii) How floristic similarity can be explained by distance among areas?
To test the hypothesis that altitude drives patterns of the floristic variation, we summarized a matrix of presence/absence data using Principal Coordinates Analysis (PCoA), with Sørensen’s distance, which is equivalent to the Bray-Curtis measure in a binary form
Summary
Aquatic plants (Scremin-Dias 2000, Scremin-Dias et al 2011). These plants represent a diversified set of species with differential adaptations and ecological strategies for maintenance of diversity, allowing them to survive in waterlogged or flooded soils (Kozlowski et al 1991, Cronk and Fennessy 2001, Cattanio et al 2002). Several authors have reported altitude as one of the main factors to influence the pattern of species colonization (e.g., Lieberman et al 1995, Pendry and Proctor 1996, Oliveira-Filho and Fontes 2000, Eisenlohr et al 2013); but other combined factors must be considered such as geographic distance between sites (Diniz-Filho et al 2012), topography, flood duration (DamascenoJúnior et al 2005), and the transport of seeds (Harper 1988, Fenner and Thompson 2005) This set of factors directly influences characteristics of each species, such as propagation, reproduction, germination, and competition (Capon and Brock 2006), which may increase the species diversity over short distances (Brock 2011). We carried out this work in six vegetation formations along the Paraguay River, addressing the following questions: (i) Do areas connected during flood periods differ in floristic similarity? (ii) Is there a pattern of floristic composition associated with altitude? (iii) How floristic similarity can be explained by distance among areas?
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