Check List 13(6): 1003-1036, doi: 10.15560/13.6.1003
Survey of the vascular plants of Sierra Chica, the untouched area of the Paititi Natural Reserve (southeastern Tandilia mountain range, Buenos Aires province, Argentina)
expand article infoMaría L. Echeverría‡, Sara I. Alonso‡, Viviana M. Comparatore§
‡ Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Balcarce, Argentina§ Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Mar del Plata, Argentina

Corresponding author: María L. Echeverría ( echeverria.marialis@inta.gob.ar )

Academic editor: Guilherme Dubal dos Santos Seger
© 2017 María L. Echeverría, Sara I. Alonso, Viviana M. Comparatore.
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: Echeverría ML, Alonso SI, Comparatore VM (2017) Survey of the vascular plants of Sierra Chica, the untouched area of the Paititi Natural Reserve (southeastern Tandilia mountain range, Buenos Aires province, Argentina). Check List 13(6): 1003-1036. https://doi.org/10.15560/13.6.1003
Open Access
Abstract
The Paititi Natural Reserve is located in the southeastern part of the Tandilia mountain range (Buenos Aires province, Argentina). With the aim of recording the floristic richness of Sierra Chica, an untouched area of the reserve, all vascular plants were inventoried and categorized by family, status, and life form. Altogether, 364 taxa from 72 families were found, with the most predominant families being Poaceae (20.7%), Asteraceae (20.1%), and Fabaceae (5.8%). We found 95 adventive species, 4 cosmopolitan, and 265 native. The most abundant life forms were hemicryptophytes (33.1%), therophytes (30.6%), and criptophytes (22.6%); the therophytes were mostly represented by adventive species. We also found species that were known from Buenos Aires province but not from mountainous areas. Despite being a small area within Argentina, Sierra Chica constitutes a valuable refuge for native flora of the Tandilia mountain range system, which is in danger of being affected by exotic plants.
Keywords
Floristic inventory; life form; status; endemism; conservation; threatened species