Journal
FLORA
Volume 207, Issue 9, Pages 662-672Publisher
ELSEVIER GMBH
DOI: 10.1016/j.flora.2012.05.003
Keywords
Bromeliaceae; Endemism; Diversity; Biogeography
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
We investigated how epiphytic species and subfamilies of Bromeliaceae change along the extent of the Atlantic Rain Forest, to answer the questions: (i) How do the epiphytic genera and subfamilies of Bromeliaceae change along the domain? (ii) How similar are the different regions of the Atlantic Rain Forest in relation to the epiphytic species of bromeliads? (iii) Which environmental variables are the most important factors in determining species composition along the domain? We found 114 species of Bromelioideae and 73 of Tillandsioideae. The predominance of Bromelioideae was unexpected, because they are not wind-dispersed as would be expected for most epiphytes. The smaller number of species of Tillandsioideae, and the high frequency of species of Vriesea with limited geographic distributions indicated that epiphytes with rather limited geographic distributions predominate in this domain. Species similarity was divided into one block of south-southeastern localities, and a second block of northeastern-southeastern localities. These results suggest that the distribution of epiphytic bromeliad species resembles that of the phorophyte trees, more than a previous pattern suggested for all epiphytes in the domain. Latitude, temperature and altitude were important factors affecting the species composition along the domain. In general, our results differ from those of other studies in Latin America, and we suggest that historical and evolutionary events generated these differences. (c) 2012 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available