Checklist of sand dune vegetation on the tropical southeastern Brazil coast

Antonio Castelo; João Marcelo Braga

doi:10.15560/13.2.2058

Check List 13(2): e19660, doi: 10.15560/13.2.2058

Checklist of sand dune vegetation on the tropical southeastern Brazil coast

Antonio Janilson Castelo^‡, João Marcelo Alvarenga Braga^§

‡ Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil§ Instituto de Pesquisas Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Corresponding author: Antonio Castelo ( janilsoncastelo@gmail.com )

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: Castelo A, Braga J (2017) Checklist of sand dune vegetation on the tropical southeastern Brazil coast. Check List 13(2): 2058. https://doi.org/10.15560/13.2.2058

Abstract

Restingas are mosaics of plant communities living on marine sand deposits of the late Quaternary period, located between the sea and the Atlantic Forest. This study presents the diversity of the vegetation of coastal sand dunes in the southeastern coast of Brazil. A floristic survey and bibliographic review of the nine restinga regions of Rio de Janeiro state was carried out, and information is presented about the habit, life form, dispersion syndrome, distribution, and biome occurrence of each species. Ninety-eight species were recorded, distributed among 81 genera and 38 families, of which the most diverse are Asteraceae (12 species), Poaceae (12 species), Fabaceae (11 species), and Rubiaceae (6 species). The majority of species have herbaceous habits and predominantly are camephyte-autochoric species. They present wide geographical distributions or are restricted to just some Brazilian states and are more similar to the Atlantic Forest biome.

Keywords

Atlantic Forest; Restinga; Rio de Janeiro; coastal vegetation; species’ inventory