No abstract

A floristic survey of climbing plants was carried out in an ecotone area of seasonal semideciduous forest (SSF) and forested savanna (CER), in Porto Ferreira State Park (PFSP), Southeastern Brazil. We sampled the reproductive specimens every month during two periods, March 2010 to September 2011 and April and July 2015. The surveys were performed by the walking method, and the sampled individuals were classified by habit, climbing mechanism and dispersal mode. Overall, 109 species, belonging to 67 genera and 29 families, were recorded; 49 species occurred in both, 29 and 31 were exclusive to SSF and CER, respectively. Bignoniaceae and Malpighiaceae were the richest families, with 17 species, followed by Sapindaceae (12 species), Asteraceae and Apocynaceae (8 species each) and Fabaceae (6). The majority of climbers were lianas, twining and anemochoric species, corresponding to 70%, 47% and 66% of all samples, respectively. In this work, we added one new family and 14 species to the Cerrado’s list of climbing plants from São Paulo state, and 10 species to the Brazilian seasonal semideciduous forest’s list. Therefore, we contributed to the understanding of diversity of climbing plants in vegetation types poorly studied for this plant group, mainly in the Cerradão, wherein we found new records for several species.

December is a time of reflection on the challenges of the past year as well as on our hopes for the coming one. The experiences from the June Symposium in Brazil are still vibrating in our minds, and this issue is again devoted mainly to them. With pleasure, we are awaiting the forthcoming meeting in Palermo next year, and the welcome call is also included in this issue.The year 2016 is almost over and we are happy that it has been active and fruitful thanks to many of you who contributed to the events and activities organized by the IAVS and its working groups. We would also like to thank those of you who helped to make our Bulletin interesting by providing news, information and/or pictures. We wish all of you a peaceful holiday time and good luck for the coming year 2017. One of my favorite courses at the University is a series of lectures on conservation biology and its applications in practical nature conservation. A considerable time of this course is devoted to conveying the manifold values of biodiversity and to providing evidence for the disastrous loss of biodiversity around the globe, across different habitat types and organism groups. When I stress that northern Germanywhere my university is located -is no exception here and suffers from an unprecedented decline in plant species richness, many students remain skeptical: Hasn't nature conservation counteracted a further loss of species by creating lots of new reserves and by making large restoration efforts? Aren't there positive population trends of many large bird species (crane, geese, sea eagle) and mammals (wolves have established themselves again in Germany) in the country that contradict the statement of a declining biodiversity? Isn't climate change still of minor importance in temperate ecosystems compared to many other parts of the world? If there is a biodiversity crisis, why isn't it perceived as a crisis even by educated biology students? I believe that there are several reasons for this, and that we as vegetation scientists can and should contribute to change this perception in order to engage people in biodiversity issues and to prompt them to take action.One basic problem of the weak public perception of the biodiversity crisis is that humans are confronted with a large number of problems other than environmental, including political and social issues that often rank higher than biodiversity (Novacek 2008). In addition, over the last years, public attention has markedly shifted away from habitat and biodiversity loss to climate change and global warming. People simply question that biodiversity affects their health and well-being, ignoring or not realizing that plants and animals provide enormous benefits, for example in the form of food and pharmaceutical products. To reverse this trend and to raise the public awareness of the biodiversity crisis, we need to become better in communicating the findings of our ecological research to a wider audience, and in showing the critical role of plant species in providing different ecosystem servi...

We present camera trap evidence of 10 Atlantic Forest mammals fur‐rubbing, licking, or biting balsam from cabreúvas (Myroxylon peruiferum, Fabaceae), native trees used in traditional medicine for their prophylactic and therapeutic virtues. Given the antiparasitic properties of cabreúvas, mammals may be using the balsam as topical self‐medication to repel ectoparasites. Abstract in Portuguese is available with online material.

Unveiling the ecological processes driving diversity and its relationship to the environment remains a central goal in ecological studies. Here, we investigated the elevation effect on plant diversity patterns of tropical rainforests, using beta-, phylogenetic and alpha diversities. To do so, we compiled a forest dataset with 22,236 trees (DBH ≥ 4.8 cm) from 17 plots of 1 ha each along an elevational gradient (0 – 1,200 m a.s.l) in the Atlantic Forest of Southeastern Brazil. We found high phylogenetic and species rates of turnover – beta-diversity - along the elevational gradient. Alpha phylodiversity showed a monotonic decrease with increasing elevation, including or not fern species (a distantly related clade usually ignored in tropical ecology studies), while the phylogenetic structure was highly affected by the inclusion of fern trees. Species diversity showed a unimodal pattern for the whole community, and different patterns for the richest families. The diversity pattern of the whole community emerges from differences among species distribution of the richest families, while phylogenetic diversity seems to be gradually filtered by elevation. At intermediate elevations, higher species diversification within families might have led to different strategies and cooccurrence in tropical rainforests. We also showed that intricate effects of elevation in species assemblages can be better assessed using both ecological and evolutionary approaches, stressing the importance of species selection in diversity analyzes. Finally, we demonstrate that elevation has different effects on the species distributions of the richest families and warn that these differences should be considered in conservation planning.