Plant Community Structure, Fire Disturbance, and Recovery in ...

Contributions to the Study of Biological Diversity Vol. 3
employed by Kelloff and Funk (2004). The
classifications are illustrated in the map in
Figure 2.3.
The Guiana Shield distribution (1) includes
species that are, fairly strictly, restricted to that
geologic formation’s igneous and sedimentary
bedrock and areas influenced by that area’s
outwash. It includes southern Venezuela, most
of the three Guianas, and parts of northern Brazil
and scattered outliers in southeastern Colombia.
The Northern South America distribution
(2) includes species found in the Guiana Shield
as well as the Northern Andes, the continent’s
Pacific coast south to the arid Peruvian coast,
and much of the Amazon Basin lowlands to
about 7 degrees south. The Andes reach much
higher elevations than the Guiana Shield
highlands. Many of the habitats in this zone are
wet to extremely wet.
The Neotropical distribution (3) includes
all of the Americas between approximately 23.5
degrees north and 23.5 degrees south, with
subclasses either including or excluding
distribution in the Antilles (3a). Following
climate patterns, this unit is mapped to the south
of the Tropic of Capricorn on the Atlantic coast
of South America, and to the north of that
latitude on the Pacific coast, which is influenced
by strong, cool ocean currents from the south.
The Trans-Atlantic distribution (4)
accommodates species native to both the
Neotropics and tropical Africa. Here this
distribution is applied predominantly to
mangrove species, thus the mapping in Figure
2.3 is adapted from the Atlantic-east Pacific
distribution from mangroves by Tomlinson
(1986)
The South American distribution (5) is
essentially self-explanatory, and is indicated on
Figure 2.3 only by the landmass of the continent.
The Western Hemisphere distribution (6)
includes species adapted to a broad climate
range. It includes species that extend into the
subtropics and temperate zones of North and
South America.
The Pantropical distribution (7) covers
tropical areas nearly worldwide, from 23.5
degrees north to 23.5 degrees south.
Cosmopolitan (8) species are those known
from both tropical, sub-tropical, and in some
cases temperate areas, nearly worldwide. Here
39
the Neotropical and Pantropical classifications
both include species that might to some degree
extend into the Subtropics.
RESULTS
Quackal and Manicole Communities
Forty-four species were shared between the
126 Waini species recorded and the list of all
species recorded by van Andel for the entire
District. That 35% overlap includes 5 species
that are either cultivated or escaped from
cultivation, Cocos nucifera L., Luffa cylindrica
M.Roem., Pedilanthus tithymaloides (L.)Poit.,
Gossypium barbadense L., and Jatropha
gossypiifolia L..
Only seven taxa were shared between the
Waini Peninsula (126 species) and van Andel’s
Quackal and Manicole plots (138 species ). That
is approximately a 5.5 % overlap relative to the
species of the Waini Peninsula. Of 240 total
plant taxa for all sites, only 51 were shared in
any way among the seven vegetation types.
Considered separately, collections resulting
from this research on the Waini Peninsula and
other sites in the Northwest added 99 species to
the baseline list formed from historic collections,
while van Andel (2000a) collections added 308
species to the baseline list. Thirteen of those
species were added by both efforts.
The similarity matrix and tree matrix,
displayed as a phenogram (similarity-based
dendrogram), from the UPGMA clustering of
the seven coastal plain communities are shown
in Figure 2.4. A cophenetic matrix was formed
from the UPGMA tree matrix and run against
the original matrix to test the goodness of fit of
the clustering results to the original data set,
using a Mantel test for matrix correspondence
(Rohlf 1997). That resulted in a high probability
(p = 0.995) that a random Z-value would be less
than the Z-value derived from the comparison
of matrices, indicating a close fit in the UPGMA
clustering. Alternate tests of single-link and
complete-link clustering methods yielded
phenograms very similar to those from UPGMA
clustering, indicating that the clusters are quite
distinct (Rohlf 1997).
Coastal Mangrove and Riverine Mangrove
swamps clustered together. The two mangrove
swamp types differed in part because different