Checklist of ferns and lycophytes from the Parque Estadual Turístico do Alto Ribeira , Iporanga , São Paulo , Brazil

We present the floristic survey of ferns and lycophytes from the “Parque Estadual Turístico do Alto Ribeira” (PETAR), a remnant of Atlantic Rain Forest of Southeastern Brazil, in São Paulo state. Besides a complete list of species, we also provide information on habit, geographic distribution, and conservation status. Among the 237 taxa, there are 235 species, one variety and one hybrid, distributed in 29 families and 74 genera. Ferns are represented by 223 taxa, whereas the lycophytes were represented by 14. The most representative families are Polypodiaceae (31 spp.), Pteridaceae (29 spp.) and Dryopteridaceae (28 spp.). The most diverse genera are Thelypteris (23 spp.), Asplenium (19 spp.), Elaphoglossum and Blechnum (10 spp. each). Noteworthy is the presence of Ctenitis anniesii, Dicksonia sellowiana, Elaphoglossum iguapense, E. prestonii, E. strictum, Thelypteris concinna, T. araucariensis and T. hatschbachii, all of them considered as endangered species in São Paulo state.


INTRODUCTION
Ferns and lycophytes are represented by approximately 13,600 species in the world, most of them occurring in tropical regions (Moran 2008).In Brazil there are approximately 1,200 species, and the greatest diversity is found in the Atlantic Rain Forest, which holds ~800 species (Prado and Sylvestre 2015).As for the State of São Paulo, 573 taxa have been recorded so far, which makes it one of the most diverse states of Brazil (Prado and Hirai 2011;Prado and Sylvestre 2015).
Therefore, the aim of this study was to present a checklist for the ferns and lycophytes in Parque Estadual Turístico do Alto Ribeira, one of the most important reserves of Atlantic Rain Forest in the southern part of São Paulo.We also provide information about the life forms and geographical distribution for each species.

Study area
The Parque Estadual Turístico do Alto Ribeira -PETAR is located on the southeastern portion of São Paulo State, in a region locally called as the "Vale do Ribeira" (Figure 1).It covers an area of about 35,712 ha, representing one of the largest remnants of Atlantic Rain Forest of Brazil (Aidar et al. 2001;Ribeiro et al. 2009) (Figure 2A-D).The climate is characterized by a transition from the warm climate of low latitudes and mesothermic temperate latitudes of midlatitudes being classified as warm and super humid with no dry season (Nimer 1977;Karmann and Ferrari 2002).The annual temperature average ranges between 17-19°C, and the average rainfall is 1,800 mm/year (Gutjhar 1993).An important aspect of the geology of the PETAR is that about 40% of its area consists of carbonate soil, which confers a particularity to this region that is one of the few areas of the Atlantic Rain Forest with outcrop of limestone interspersed with outcrops of phyllite in the country (Aidar et al. 2001).

Data collection and analysis
Seven field trips were carried out, from September 2011 to August 2012.All specimens were deposited in

Lists of species
the Herbarium UPCB.Duplicates, when available, were sent to the SP, UNIP, NY, UC and RB herbaria.We also conducted a survey of species from secondary data, using the online database available at the speciesLink (2012).Data on geographical distribution of species were obtained from specialized literature.Types of habits were treated as guilds of life forms, following Paciencia (2008).Species conservation status in the state of São Paulo was obtained from SMA (2004).The taxonomic treatment adopted for the ferns and Selaginellaceae follows Christenhusz et al. (2011), Christenhusz andSchneider (2011) and Rothfels et al. (2012) while for Lycopodiaceae was accepted the classification proposed by Øllgaard and Windisch (2014).The names of authors of taxa were abbreviated according to Pichi-Sermolli (1996).
Regarding geographical distribution of the species observed, 98 (41.3%) are Neotropical, 48 (20.2%) are endemic to South America, 39 are endemic to Brazil (16.4%), 31 are endemic to Southeastern and Southern Brazil (13.1%) and 21 are pantropical species (8.9%).Besides, eight species are considered threatened in state of São Paulo, all in vulnerable category.

DISCUSSION
The species richness found in this study corresponds to approximately 41.3% of the species recorded for the state of São Paulo by Prado and Hirai (2011), and it is one of the richest areas for ferns and lycophytes in Southeastern Brazil.Other surveys carried out in southeastern Brazilian rainforest have also found a high number of species, such as Paciencia (2008), which inventoried 216 species, Salino and Almeida (2008) (212 species), Souza et al. (2012) (209 species), Melo and Salino (2007) (174 species), and Matos et al. (2010) (182 species).Noteworthy is that all these studies were conducted in mountainous areas, which are considered to provide a wide variety of habitats that contribute to a high diversity of ferns and lycophytes (Moran 1995).
Regarding the number of epiphytic species, our results show a lower percentage of epiphytic species when compared to other studies.For instance, Dittrich et al. (2005), Paciencia (2008), andSylvestre (1997) have recorded 62.9%, 60.8%, and 48.7% of epiphytic species, respectively.On the other hand, studies that involved more than one type of phytophysiognomy obtained results similar to those found in this study as is the case of works of Salino and Almeida (2008) with 30.6%,Melo and Salino (2007) with 23.2%, Salino et al. (2005) with 19.3% and Souza et al. (2012) with 15.5%.The moderate percentage of epiphytes obtained in this study may be related to the presence of large areas with limestone outcrops (Figure 2B-C) allied to the inland position of the park in relation to the Atlantic Ocean.Thus, the presence of these relatively dry environments may be less attractive for the attachment and growth of some epiphytes.The same pattern was found for some Semideciduous Forests, such as Windisch (1992), Salino (1996), Salino and Joly (2001), Melo and Salino (2002), Figueiredo and Salino (2005) and Nóbrega and Prado (2008).

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Pictures of Parque Estadual Turístico do Alto Ribeira.A: general view of the park; B: limestone outcrops; C: view of the interior of the forest over limestone soil; D: River Betari, one of the most preserved riparian forests in PETAR.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Location map of Parque Estadual Turístico do Alto Ribeira in state of São Paulo and the distribution of limestone soil in green.