Dunes in the North coast of Sergipe, Brazil: plant species and their ecological traits

Abstract

Restinga vegetation, which is a vegetation type of coastal zones, are present in two geomorphological features in the North coast of Sergipe state - Brazil: litoraneous dunes (LD) and continental dunes (CD). The objective of the present paper is to record the species composition, Raunkiaer’s life forms, dispersal syndromes and soil fertility differences between both habitats. Furthermore, we compared the life forms spectra of the studied features to the spectra of the main Brazilian phytogeographic domains. We conducted a floristic survey from November 2013 to May 2014 in different Restinga areas in two dune habitats in coastal Sergipe state, Brazil, and compared differences in the two localities. Although the two areas were geographically close, there was low floristic similarity between the two habitats; CD showed higher richness than LD. The spectrum of life forms was more similar to that of Caatinga, probably due to environmental similarities. Life forms and dispersal syndromes proportions significantly differed between features, as well as the pH, organic matter, phosphorus, sodium and base saturation index. Zoochory prevailed in both features, whereas phanerophytes prevailed in CD and chamaephytes and phanerophytes in LD. Despite the influence of historical processes, micro-environmental differences between features, which were amplified by their different distances from the sea, were assumingly responsible for the recorded differences.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) promote the growth of the pioneer dune plant of coastal areas

“…The justification presented above may be applicable to the present work, since dune soil, characteristically known for low organic matter decomposition and low soil fertility (Camprubíet et al, 2010;Oliveira and Landim, 2020), the same characteristics were presented by the substrate used, and as suggested by Smith and Read (2008) and Nayak et al (2019), the AMF were probably stimulated in soils with low fertility. The percentage of root colonization (% M) by AMF increased from 6.4 to 10.2% throughout the experiment (Figure 4).…”