Edge or harvest effect? Demography and conservation status of Euterpe edulis Martius in a protected area of lowland Atlantic forest (RJ)
Keywords:
Conservation. Demography. Euterpe edulis. Population. Regeneration.Abstract
Intrinsically, Juçara palm (Euterpe edulis Martius) arouses great interest for its beauty and key role in the communities of Atlantic forest fragments because it is used as food resource for a vast assembly of vertebrates. The study aimed to investigate the conservation status of an endangered key palm (Euterpe edulis) in the Reserva Biológica União (Rio das Ostras, RJ) by studying its demography, and answer the following questions: Does the population suffer edge effect? Does the scale of observation influence their detection? We measured variables of vegetation structure (herbaceous cover, canopy cover and understory cover) to characterize the environments and relate them with abundance and DGH of Euterpe edulis. Our results indicate that the Juçara population in the Reserva Biológica União does not undergo edge effects. The structural variables of the vegetation were not related with abundance and DGH of the different life stages. However, we find that the population structure of the species does not promote the natural regeneration distribution ("inverted J" distribution), because there is no stock seedling formed. The low density and aggregation, in addition to the absence of a seedling bank formed, with the average diameter observed for adults (14 cm), suggest that the population was dramatically suppressed in the recent past.Downloads
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