Seasonal Dynamics of Flooded Tropical Grassland Communities in the Pantanal Wetland
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GENERAL WETLAND SCIENCE
Seasonal Dynamics of Flooded Tropical Grassland Communities in the Pantanal Wetland Fernando Henrique Barbosa da Silva 1,2
&
Cátia Nunes da Cunha 2,3
&
Gerhard Ernst Overbeck 1,4
Received: 28 October 2019 / Accepted: 13 February 2020 # Society of Wetland Scientists 2020
Abstract We aimed to answer the following questions: do vegetation structure and functional characteristics of grassland types differ between hydrological periods (i.e., aquatic and terrestrial phase) in the Pantanal wetland? What general plant functional traits characterize these communities? We sampled 37 sites in three grassland types in the Cuiabá river megafan, in the northern Pantanal, Brazil, in both the aquatic and terrestrial phases. We determined, from the literature, ‘stable’ plant functional traits, namely life cycle, bud-bank types and, for graminoids, photosynthetic pathway, i.e., characteristics important in tropical habitats with the occurrence of flood, fire and drought. We compared the grassland types in distinct hydrological phases concerning the vegetation structure and functional attributes using Permutation test. We found that all grasslands are dominated by perennials during terrestrial and aquatic phases. Most species bears clonal organs, and aboveground bud-banks are specially relevant to the grassland under long-term flooding. C4 graminoids are dominant but C3 graminoids increase their cover during aquatic phase. Pantanal grasslands are rich in species and showed marked differences in height between terrestrial and aquatic phases. Our results are a basis to devise conservation strategies for grasslands in the Pantanal, susceptible to threats by global change processes. Keywords Biodiversity . Community ecology . Floodplain . Hyperseasonal savanna . Morphological plasticity . Regeneration
Introduction Wetlands subject to fluctuating water level (i.e., flood pulse) comprise complex systems that occur in wide plains adjacent to major streams (e.g., Amazonas, Araguaia, Negro, Parana, Paraguay) in the Tropics (Junk et al. 2015). High seasonality of rainfall is the main driver of flood pulses, resulting in very Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-020-01281-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Fernando Henrique Barbosa da Silva [email protected] 1
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (PPGBOT-UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil
2
Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia em Áreas Úmidas (INCT-INAU), Cuiabá, Brazil
3
Departamento de Botânica e Ecologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso (PPGECB-UFMT), Cuiabá, Brazil
4
Departamento de Botânica, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil
contrasting habitats for flora and fauna during the year in this type of wetlands. While often completely flooded during the wet season (i.e., aquatic phase), almost no water may be present during the dry season (i.e., terrestrial phase), when fires may occ
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