Artificial perches for the supply of seeds in a fragmented landscape in southwest Brazilian Amazon
- PDF / 1,227,410 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 84 Downloads / 180 Views
ECOLOGY & BIOGEOGRAPHY - ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Artificial perches for the supply of seeds in a fragmented landscape in southwest Brazilian Amazon L. Alencar1 · E. Guilherme2 Received: 27 December 2019 / Revised: 23 September 2020 / Accepted: 25 September 2020 / Published online: 23 October 2020 © Botanical Society of Sao Paulo 2020
Abstract Artificial perches can provide an important supply of seeds and contribute to ecological restoration. In the present study, we verified the effectiveness of artificial perches for the dispersal of seeds in an area of the southwest Brazilian Amazon. We conducted the study on the Catuaba Experimental Farm in State of Acre, Brazil, from March 2016 to March 2017. We installed seed traps with artificial perches and control traps at different distances from the adjacent forest. We collected 19,865 seeds in boxes under the artificial perches and 1300 in the control traps. There was greater richness of plant species and abundance of seeds in the boxes under the artificial perches when compared with the control traps. The artificial perches at a distance of 40 m from the adjacent forest presented a greater species richness and distinct composition of plants. The quantity of dispersed seeds did not correlate with precipitation, although there was a correlation between rainfall and the fresh seed mass. The artificial perches were efficient at dispersing seeds and are a low-cost technique that can be used as a strategy for the regeneration of forests in degraded areas. Keywords Forest fragment · Habitat regeneration · Seed dispersal · State of acre · Zoochory
1 Introduction Anthropogenic activities cause numerous environmental impacts, reducing continuous areas of native forest and transforming them into isolated fragments through the construction of roads, logging, and wildfires of natural or anthropogenic origin (Guilherme and Cintra 2001; Wade et al. 2003; Fearnside 2014; Silva et al. 2015). After intensive use, many areas in tropical regions are abandoned due to the loss of fertility and the invasion of weeds (Pejchar et al. 2007). Without intervention, the restoration of the forest of these areas is slow and can take decades (Holl and Aide 2011). One way to speed up the regeneration process is to
* L. Alencar [email protected] 1
Programa de Pós‑Graduação em Ecologia e Manejo de Recursos Naturais, Universidade Federal do Acre, Rodovia BR‑364, km 04, Distrito Industrial, Rio Branco, Acre 69920‑900, Brazil
Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Natureza, Laboratório de Ornitologia, Universidade Federal do Acre, Rodovia BR‑364, km 04, Distrito Industrial, Rio Branco, Acre 69920‑900, Brazil
2
facilitate the dispersal of seeds by animals (Pejchar et al. 2007; Godínez-Alvarez et al. 2020). Dispersal is the movement of a seed or spore, disseminating individuals into or out of the population or area (Odum and Barret 2007). This process influences the spatial distribution and population dynamics of plants, their occupation of new habitats, and the maintenance of biodiversity, af
Data Loading...
