ENVIRONMENTAL AND SPATIAL DETERMINANTS OF THE COMPOSITION AND DIVERSITY OF WOODY PLANTS FROM SAVANIC FORMATIONS OF THE CERRADO
ECOLOGY, BIOGEOGRAPHIC PATTERNS, SOIL PLANT, LCBD.
The Cerrado Biome is known for its notorious biodiversity of flora, but there are still gaps about how environmental conditions and space determine the composition, diversity and distribution of flora on a biome scale. We evaluated the influence of soils, climate and space on the composition and abundance of woody plants in two Cerrado environments: Cerrado Rupestre that occurs on rocky and shallow soils and Cerrado Típico that occurs on deep soils. We compiled data from 128 sites (33 from Cerrado Rupestre and 95 from Cerrado Típico), sampled using standardized methodology. We used the following analyses: PCoA to evaluate species composition, IndVal to show which indicator species of each environment, RDA to evaluate the relationship between environment, space and composition, GDM to confirm how these environmental effects act on the composition and LCBD for which sites contribute more to beta diversity. We show that the physical and chemical properties of the soil and the climatic variables contribute to explain the species composition of the two types of vegetation. However, the effects of soils are greater than the effects of climate and relief. The first two axes of the RDA explained, respectively, 40% and 23% of the variation in floristic composition in relation to soil properties. We also show that 15 sites contribute to regional diversity, five from Cerrado Rupestre and 10 from Cerrado Típico. Our results are useful to cover some gaps that still exist about the composition of species, soils and climate in the Cerrado Rupestre and Cerrado Típico and the isolated and integrated effects of the environment and geographic distance on the structuring of woody communities in the Cerrado.