Vascular epiphytes in a forest fragment of Serra da Mantiqueira and floristic relationships with Atlantic high altitude areas in Minas Gerais

Abstract

This study presents the results of a vascular epiphytic flora survey in a fragment of the Serra da Mantiqueira, southeastern Brazil, and compares the floristic composition with that of six other altitude areas of this mountainous complex in the Minas Gerais State, using the Jaccard index and the unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic mean algorithm. The survey was performed between September 2010 and January 2012 in the Serra do Cruz (SC), part of the Mantiqueira complex. The survey recorded 135 species, 62 genera, and 16 families. Orchidaceae and Polypodiaceae were the richest families among the angiosperms and ferns, respectively. Some species were recorded for the first time in the flora of Minas Gerais State, including Cryptophoranthus jordanensis and Pleurothallis gehrtii. Five species are threatened with extinction in Minas Gerais, cited in different categories: Epidendrum ochrochlorum, Hadrolaelia coccinea and Pleurothallis cryptophoranthoides (as Endangered, EN), and Vriesea pendulifora and Oncidium warmingii (as Vulnerable, VU). The similarity analysis showed that the composition of vascular epiphytes of the SC is more related to that of the Serra Negra and Parque Estadual do Ibitipoca, and that about 60 % of this similarity is due to geographic distance, although with relatively low values of about 0.31–0.35. Although geographically close, the low similarity between the three areas reinforces the need for conservation of all remnant fragments of the Serra da Mantiqueira, to conserve the Minas Gerais flora as a whole.