Aims: The native woody vegetation from the Espinal phytogeographic province in central Argentina, found in subtropical-warm temperate climates, represents part of the southernmost seasonally dry forest in South America. Although this vegetation has been studied for over a century, a complete phytosociological survey is still needed. This lack of knowledge makes its spatial delimitation and the establishment of efficient conservation strategies particularly difficult. The main goals of this study were to classify these forests and assess their current forest cover and to better define the extent of the Espinal phytogeographic province in Córdoba region, central Argentina. Study area: Espinal Phytogeographic Province in Córdoba region, central Argentina (ca. 101,500 km2). Methods: We sampled 122 stands following the principles of the Zürich-Montpellier School of phytosociology; relevés were classified through the ISOPAM hierarchical analysis. The extent of the Espinal phytogeographic province was established by overlaying previous vegetation maps, and a map showing the current distribution of forest patches was constructed based on a supervised classification of Landsat images. Results: Four woody vegetation types of seasonally dry subtropical forest were identified based on the fidelity and the abundance of diagnostic species: (1) Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco forest; (2) Zanthoxylum coco forest; (3) Geoffroea decorticans forest; and (4) Prosopis caldenia forest. These vegetation types were segregated along gradients of temperature and precipitation seasonality and soil-texture and sodium content. The remaining forest patches represent 3.43% of the extent of the Espinal province in Córdoba region of which only 1.05% is represented in protected areas. Conclusions: We present a classification of the Espinal forest based on a complete floristic survey. Despite the dramatic forest loss reported, our results show that some forest patches representative of the Espinal are still likely to be found in the area. However, urgent measures should be taken to establish new protected natural areas in order to preserve the last remaining forest patches. Taxonomic reference: Catálogo de las Plantas Vasculares del Cono Sur (Zuloaga et al. 2008) and its online update (http://www.darwin.edu.ar). Abbreviations: ISOMAP = isometric feature mapping; ISOPAM = isometric partitioning around medoids.
composition can influence ecosystemic processes either through affecting plant community composition and thus its processes rates, or soil microbial communities, which are directly involved in nutrient cycling (Rillig 2004). According to Pärtel et al. (2016), soil microorganisms are considered a potentially suitable target for studying regional and local effects on diversity. The symbiosis with AMF not only increases nutrient uptake by the plant of mainly phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) in exchange for plant-assimilated carbon (C), but also improves the tolerance of plants to various biotic and abiotic stresses such as pathogens, salinity, and drought (Smith and Read 2008). External factors (abiotic and biotic) and intrinsic properties of species (dispersal ability, rates of speciation and extinction) affect the AMF geographical distributions (Chaudhary et al. 2008). For instance, the abiotic factors of temperature and precipitation constrain AMF occurrence (Davison et al. 2015) while biotic ones such as host preferences determine the rhizospheric AMF community (Senés-Guerrero and Schüßler 2016; Soteras et al. 2016). Moreover, anthropogenic activities like agricultural practices that alter soil conditions could influence the occurrence of AM fungal taxa (Cofré et al. 2017). At the same time, either external or internal factors may indirectly influence each other, causing changes in AMF taxa occurrence and distribution (Chaudhary et al. 2008). Currently, an increasing number of studies attempt at unravelling the worldwide geographical patterns of AMF (
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