Brazil's Ecological Transition Zones: Phytogeographic and Phylogenetic Patterns
estimated richness; floristic inventory; environmental variability
Knowledge about the arboreal component represents an important step in understanding neotropical ecological transitions. Thus, we present - for the first time - a phytogeographic analysis of tree species for Transitions between Brazilian biomes. For this, we collected data from a large database (NeoTropTree) along with platform-specific literature and performed richness estimation analyses. We found 56,500 occurrences of tree species distributed in a total of 118 families, 665 genera and 3,471 species. Fabaceae and Myrtaceae were the richest families, and the transition between the Amazon and Cerrado biomes has the greatest tree richness in Brazil. We also show that the Ecological Transition Zones represent places with high richness and environmental heterogeneity, showing that their composition of species and ecosystem services are unique, making even more evident the need to apply specific laws and prioritize protected areas for these places.