Abstract
The growing loss of cerrado sensu stricto coverage has increased its visibility and generated a rising amount of information about this biome. Such attention has already allowed identifying phytogeographic patterns and defining floristic provinces based on the flora differentiation patterns. This study aims to describe an unknown cerrado sensu stricto area close to two floristic-province borders and test if the area has floristic connections with surrounding locations in agreement with patterns proposed in the literature. A total area of 1.45 ha was sampled by plots, gathering data of individuals with circumference at soil height > 31.4 cm. Structural parameters, Shannon’s index (H’) and Pielou’s equitability (J’) were calculated to describe the vegetation. Results were compared through similarity analysis (SØrensen’s coefficient) to nine other cerrado sensu stricto vegetation surveys. A total of 1155 individuals were recorded, 90 species, 73 genera and 37 families. H’ was 3.75 and J’ was 0.83. Qualea grandiflora, Magonia pubescens, Curatella americana and Q. parviflora were the species with highest importance values. Tree density was 796 individuals ha-1 and total basal area at soil height reached 11.87 m2 ha-1. The results call attention to the difficulties of comparing studies with different methodologies and reveal that Buriti’s cerrado sensu stricto has similarity values which are in agreement with the floristic differentiation patterns proposed in the literature.
Key words:
richness; diversity; similarity; heterogeneity