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Plant diversity conservation in an agricultural frontier in the Brazilian Cerrado

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Abstract

The conversion of natural landscapes associated with agricultural activities is one of the major causes for the decline of biodiversity, especially in tropical regions. However, conservation planning within these regions is often hampered by insufficient biological data. In this work, we compiled plant diversity data for the agricultural frontier known as Matopiba. This is an area experiencing accelerated habitat loss. Although home to one of the largest remnants of natural vegetation in the Brazilian Cerrado biodiversity hotspot, only scant knowledge of its plant diversity exists. In total, we compiled 24,312 unique angiosperm records belonging to 139 families, 796 genera and 2,517 species. Occurrence data are very sparse. Approximately 39% of the region has < 0.1 record/km2, and only two areas have more than 1 record/km2. Rarefaction curves and a steady increase in new species discovery (27 new species from 2015–2020) indicate that knowledge of plant diversity in the study area is far from complete. Despite the significant proportion of collection gaps, our results suggest that the region’s flora is considerably rich, including 54 endemics and 38 threatened species. However, only 15% of the flora has been evaluated for conservation status. Only 28% of endemic and 53% of threatened species are reported to occur in protected areas. It is expected that this study will encourage a greater sampling effort to fill gaps in floristic knowledge and contribute data to support biodiversity conservation in a key region that is under high pressure by agricultural expansion.

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All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Embrapa–Cenargen staff for assistance during herbarium work and field expeditions, as well as Glocimar Pereira-Silva, Mateus Martins, Maurício Figueira and Bianca Schindler for contributing floristic data. We also thank Juliana Rando (Univ. Federal do Oeste da Bahia) for providing data from the BRBA herbarium and Renata Françoso for sharing a database of Cerrado woody plants. We are indebted to Carol Barradas and Marco Borges (ICMBio) and the staff of the Estação Ecológica Serra Geral do Tocantins for their generous support during fieldwork and authorization for plant collections (SISBIO 61941-1). The first author thanks the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher-Level Personnel (CAPES, finance code 88882.387125/2019-01) for the scholarship during her PhD in the Programa de Pós Graduação em Botânica, University of Brasilia.

Funding

Partial financial support was received from Coordination for the Improvement of Higher-Level Personnel—CAPES, finance code 88882.387125/2019–01.

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  1. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Botânica, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, Brazil

    Jéssica Cauana de Oliveira Santana

  2. Embrapa Recursos Genéticos e Biotecnologia, Brasília, Brazil

    Marcelo Fragomeni Simon

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  1. Jéssica Cauana de Oliveira Santana
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design, data collection, material preparation and analysis. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Jéssica Cauana de Oliveira Santana and the author Marcelo Fragomeni Simon commented and revised on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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de Oliveira Santana, J.C., Simon, M.F. Plant diversity conservation in an agricultural frontier in the Brazilian Cerrado. Biodivers Conserv 31, 667–681 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-022-02356-2

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