A floristic survey of angiosperm species occurring at three landscapes of the Central Amazon várzea, Brazil

By

Luize, Bruno Garcia
Venticinque, Eduardo M.
Silva, Thiago Sanna Freire
Novo, Evlyn Márcia Leão de Moraes

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2015-11-10

Original Publication

Check list : journal of species lists and distribution

Volume

11

Series / Issue

Issue: 6

Pages

1789--15

Subjects

Angiosperms , floristic survey , Purus River wetlands , white-water floodplain forests

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

[São Paulo, Brazil] Luís Felipe Toledo 2005-

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15560/11.6.1789

 

Abstract

The Amazonian floodplains harbor highly diverse wetland forests, with angiosperms adapted to survive extreme floods and droughts. About 14% of the Amazon Basin is covered by floodplains, which are fundamental to river productivity, biogeochemical cycling and trophic flow, and have been subject to human occupation since Pre-Colombian times. The botanical knowledge about these forests is still incomplete, and current forest degradation rates are much higher than the rate of new botanical surveys. Herein we report the results of three years of botanical surveys in floodplain forests of the Central Amazon. This checklist contains 432 tree species comprising 193 genera and 57 families. The most represented families are Fabaceae, Myrtaceae, Lauraceae, Sapotaceae, Annonaceae, and Moraceae representing 53% of the identified species. This checklist also documents the occurrence of approximately 236 species that have been rarely recorded as occurring in white-water floodplain forests.