Check List 9(2): 298-312, doi: 10.15560/9.2.298
Aquatic macrophytes of Northeastern Brazil: checklist, richness, distribution and life forms [with erratum]
expand article infoEdson Gomes de Moura-Júnior‡, Liliane Ferreira Lima‡, Simone Santos Lira Silva§, Raíssa Maria Sampaio de Paiva|, Fernando Alves Ferreira, Carmen Silvia Zickel§, Arnildo Pott
‡ Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil§ Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, Brazil| Universidade Federal de Roraima, Brazil¶ Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil

Corresponding author: Carmen Zickel ( zickelbr@yahoo.com )

© 2017 Edson Moura-Júnior, Liliane Lima, Simone Silva, Raíssa Maria Paiva, Fernando Ferreira, Carmen Zickel, Arnildo Pott.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Zickel C, Moura-Júnior E, Lima L, Silva S, Ferreira F, Paiva R, Pott A (2013) Aquatic macrophytes of Northeastern Brazil: checklist, richness, distribution and life forms [with erratum]. Check List 9(2): 298-312. https://doi.org/10.15560/9.2.298
Open Access
Abstract
Aquatic plants have great influence on the structure and dynamics of aquatic ecosystems, thereby contributing considerably to biodiversity. In Brazil, knowledge of the biodiversity of aquatic macroflora is still limited. We present a checklist of aquatic macrophytes occurring in the northeastern region of Brazil through a bibliographic search. We recorded a total of 412 species, 217 genera and 72 families. The most representative families were Cyperaceae (70 species), Poaceae (38), Fabaceae (27) and Asteraceae (20). The States with highest number of species were Pernambuco (370), Bahia (360), Ceará (267) and Paraíba (261). The best-represented life forms were amphibious (193 species) and emergent (100). The aquatic flora of Northeastern Brazil exhibits high species richness; however, there is a scarcity of records of aquatic macrophytes for the States of Alagoas, Rio Grande do Norte, Maranhão, Sergipe and Piauí.
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