The Role of Climate and Topography in Shaping the Diversity of Plant Communities in Cabo Verde Islands

Abstract

The flora and vegetation of the archipelago of Cabo Verde is dominated by Macaronesian, Mediterranean, and particularly by African tropical elements, resulting from its southernmost location, when compared to the other islands of the Macaronesia (i.e., Azores, Madeira, Selvagens, and Canary Islands). Very likely, such a geographical position entailed higher susceptibility to extreme climatic fluctuations, namely those associated with the West African Monsoon oscillations. These fluctuations led to a continuous aridification, which is a clear trend shown by most recent studies based on continental shelf cores. Promoting important environmental shifts, such climatic fluctuations are accepted as determinant to explain the current spatial distribution patterns of taxa, as well as the composition of the plant communities. In this paper, we present a comprehensive characterization of the main plant communities in Cabo Verde, and we discuss the role of the climatic and topoclimatic diversity in shaping the vegetation composition and distribution of this archipelago. Our study reveals a strong variation in the diversity of plant communities across elevation gradients and distinct patterns of richness among plant communities. Moreover, we present an overview of the biogeographical relationships of the Cabo Verde flora and vegetation with the other Macaronesian Islands and northwestern Africa. We discuss how the distribution of plant communities and genetic patterns found among most of the endemic lineages can be related to Africa’s ongoing aridification, exploring the impacts of a process that marks northern Africa from the Late Miocene until the present.

Cabo Verde’s Poaceae Flora: A Reservoir of Crop Wild Relatives Diversity for Crop Improvement

“…Climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been impacting water resources, and agricultural and food systems, particularly during the first decade of the 21st century, the warmest decade on record ( Rickards and Howden, 2012 ; Hartmann et al, 2013 ). Cabo Verde Islands are highly susceptible to climate change due to consecutive years of drought and their poor soil structure, intensified by scarce vegetation cover ( Neto et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Cabo Verde has a dry tropical climate with two well-marked seasons conditioning the distribution of its flora and vegetation ( Neto et al, 2020 ). The long dry season of 8–10 months varies between November and July, and the sparse and irregular humid rainy season of 1–3 months, usually occurs from August to October ( Monteiro et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Therefore, and despite the great importance of the Poaceae family as the dominant element of the native flora of Cabo Verde, the potential of plant genetic resources of these islands to supplement the genetic pool of cultivated species has been poorly explored. Considering the huge wealth of natural grass populations occurring in these islands under extreme environmental conditions, from dry lowlands to less dry altitude zones or even to subalpine regions ( Neto et al, 2020 ), assessing the diversity of wild species with potential adaptive characteristics for abiotic stress tolerance would generate new data on varieties of Cabo Verde adapted to drought conditions ( Essoh et al, 2020 ). This could contribute to valorise plant genetic resources and, in the future, to generate new eco-products with national economic impacts at the industry and economy levels.…”

Leaf functional traits and insular colonization: Subtropical islands as a melting pot of trait diversity in a widespread plant lineage

“…Under this scenario of climatic stability, we could hypothesize that multiple colonizations from a common mainland source would have promoted similar leaf phenotypes among island systems (Burns et al., 2012). However, recent studies suggest that those islands geographically closer to mainland areas may have been more impacted by climatic shifts than other islands within Macaronesia (García‐Verdugo, Caujapé‐Castells, Illera, et al, 2019; Neto et al., 2020), which may have triggered disparate patterns of phenotypic adaptation at the regional scale. Considering this alternative scenario, conditions specific to each island lineage (i.e.…”

Biodiversity of Vegetation and Flora in Tropical Africa

“…The diversity and structure of miombo, one of the most important ecoregions in the continent, is studied in southwest Angola by Godlee et al [5] and compared to other miombo sub-types. In a work concerning the Cabo Verde Islands (West Africa), Neto et al [6] discuss the role of abiotic factors, particularly climate and topography, in shaping the diversity of plant communities in this semi-arid archipelago. Hammond and Pokorný [7] address the process of succession in a tropical moist semi-deciduous forest, analyzing the diversity of tree species in gap regeneration.…”