Estrutura, composição florística e relação vegetação-ambiente em floresta ombrófila densa no Parque Nacional do Caparaó, Espírito Santo

Abstract

Environmental variables are one of the main high species richness promoters in the tropics, owing to the fact that regions have heterogeneous characteristics. Possibly Brazil is the country which refuges the greatest plant richness in the world, which is related with the occurrence of several phytophysiognomyies. Some regions in Brazil and certain types of forest formations are underexplored, that create “knowledge gaps”. Therefore, forests in high-altitude areas exhibit a high shortage of floristic researches. The studies inadequacy in these areas associated with the endemic species occurrence make the discovery of new species in montane environments a relatively common situation. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the structure and floristic composition of the plant community from an area in Tropical Rainforest in Santa Marta valley, Ibitirama, Espírito Santo, which belongs to Caparaó National Park. Our hypotheses were: 1) the species exhibit heterogeneous distribution in the valley; 2) that distribution occurs due to the edaphic environmental variable influence; 3) the area exhibits greater floristic similarity with the Tropical Montane Rainforest and Tropical Upper Montane Rainforest southeastern Brazil; 4) the area has unknown species to science. Our results supported these hypotheses, which we concluded that the species have heterogeneous distribution along the valley, suffering strong spatial and edaphic variable influence (organic matter and potential acidity). The Santa Marta valley has greater similarity to montane forests and upper montane forests of the Serra do Mar and Mantiqueira located in São Paulo and Minas Gerais. We also demonstrated the great species richness in the area, where there are endangered species and possible new species.