Checklist of climbing plants in an Araucaria forest of Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil

Abstract

Climbing plants are remarkable components of forests, highly contributing for the diversity and dynamics of communities. Studies focusing on climbing plants are scarce and for many vegetation types little is known about climbing species composition and their traits relevant for dispersal and establishment. The focus of this study is to provide the first floristic inventory of climbing plants in an Araucaria forest of Brazil, describing the dispersal syndromes and climbing mechanisms of species and comparing these traits and species composition patterns with other study sites in Southern Brazil. We found 104 taxa belonging to 33 families, with Asteraceae (22 spp.) and Apocynaceae (14 spp.) being the richest families. Among climbing mechanisms, stem twiner (50 spp.) is the most common, followed by tendril (20 spp.) and scrambler (12 spp.), while in relation to the dispersal syndromes, anemochoric species (65 spp.) are the most relevant followed by endozoochoric (28 spp.). Three new species registries were found for Rio Grande do Sul State expanding their occurrence range towards South Brazil. The comparison of climbers' survey sites showed two sharp groups in relation to species composition and traits proportion, Seasonal and Araucaria/Atlantic forest sites, but with no difference of traits frequency between sites. There is a predominance of stem twiners species in all sites, but the relative difference for tendril species increases in Araucaria and Atlantic forest sites. The Asteraceae and Apocynaceae families were the most relevant, contrasting to Seasonal forests of Southeast Brazil. Interesting patterns can be achieved with a more detailed classification of climbing mechanisms and the results found in this study contributes to enhance the knowledge on climbers' traits and diversity in South Brazil. Keywords: Lianas, Vines, Climbing mechanisms, Dispersal syndromes, Floristic of climbers. SEGER

Updates on extratropical region climbing plant flora: news regarding a still-neglected diversity

“…Notably, other families known to possess great climbing plant representatives, such as Bignoniaceae, Sapindaceae, and Malpighiaceae, and renowned for supporting a high diversity of woody climbers in tropical regions are not overly representative in the study area. In local scale floristic surveys, however, Seger & Hartz (2014) found that Bignoniaceae and Sapindaceae richness is increased in seasonal sites.…”

“…Climbing plant diversity and ecology in South Brazil have been addressed by punctual studies restricted to forest ecosystems, which still retain many northern tropical elements (Citadini-Zanette et al 1997;Durigon et al 2009;Durigon & Waechter 2011;Seger & Hartz 2014;Guerra et al 2015;Oliveira et al 2016;Seger et al 2017), thus preventing a more comprehensive analysis of southern climbing flora richness and distribution. Conversely, the extensive work of taxonomic cataloging Brazilian flora in recent years (Forzza et al 2010;Brazil Flora Group 2015;Flora do Brasil 2020) has generated a large amount of new occurrence data by state, allowing for the development of some regionalized biodiversity estimates, even for poorly known groups such as climbing plants.…”

Diversity and Threatened Climber Plants in Tropical Forests of Courtallam Hills, Southern Western Ghats, India

“…However, Muthumperumal and Parthasarathy (2009) recorded a total of 175 climbing plant species that belong to 100 genera and 40 families in tropical forests of southern Eastern Ghats, India. Seger and Hartz (2014) also conducted in northern Eastern Ghats of forests where 170 liana species were recorded, representing 109 genera and 43 families from 210 grids. A total of 169 species belonging to 60 families were encountered in the Cagarras Islands Natural Monument (CINM) located offshore of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Bovini et al, 2014), while Araujo and Alves (2010) also reported 93 climbing plant species were recorded in land Atlantic forest, northern Brazil, moreover in Upper Guinean forests documented 746 species of climbers (Jongkind and Hawthorne, 2005).…”

“…The lianas are largely used by local communities especially those surviving in nearby areas (Phillips, 1991;Bongers et al, 2002Liu et al, 2004Ewango, 2010;Muthumperumal and Parthasarathy, 2013). The climbing plants are found in all types of forests and all over the world, a few of climber studies have been carried out in the Western Ghats (Sarvalingam et al, 2011;Sarvalingam and Rajendran, 2012; and Eastern Ghats (Reddy and Parthasarathy, 2003;Parthasarathy et al, 2004;Muthumperumal and Parthasarathy, 2009;Seger and Hartz, 2014) of forests, India. Over the time period liana abundance has increased in various tropical forests in old-growth forests of western Amazonia (Phillips et al, 2002;Foster et al, 2008), the Guianas (Chave et al, 2008) and Central America (Wright et al, 2004;Ingwell et al, 2010;Schnitzer et al, 2012;Yorke et al, 2013).…”

Phylogenetic and functional structure of climbing plant assemblages in woody patches advancing over Campos grassland

“…We identified up to the species level all climbing plant individuals rooted inside the plots and clearly climbing a phorophyte. Species were classified according to climbing mechanism, dispersal syndrome and diaspore type (size/ weight classes) using specialized literature (Seger et al 2013;Seger & Hartz 2014) and personal observation. Climbing mechanisms were classified according to Hegarty (1991) into stem twiner, petiole twiner, tendril (that coil), adhesive tendril (terminal adhesive pads), clasp tendril, hook/spine (also aculeus or trichomes that prevent slipping), scrambler and adherent roots.…”