Filling a critical gap in the sampling of Amazonia plant diversity: Floristic inventory of the Tapajos National Forest and Amazonia National Park

New York Botanical Garden, Bronx NY

Investigators

Abstract

The basin of the Tapajos River in the Brazilian Amazon Rain Forest is a region of exceptionally high biodiversity and pressing ecosystem threats, including some of the highest deforestation rates in the Amazon. The plant communities of the region are very poorly known, and many large areas within the basin have been little studied by botanists. This paucity of botanical information about the region impedes critical research on the past, present, and future of Amazonian plant diversity. This project will compile inventories of the plants of two protected areas in the region that are critical for the study and management of biodiversity. The primary goal is to produce an interactive open-access, web-based conspectus guide to the plants of the two areas. Project data will be shared with the global research community and Brazilian governmental agencies so that the plant resources and natural ecosystems contained within the two areas might be more effectively studied, protected, and managed. Beyond its basic scientific value, the project will advance scientific collaboration between the US and Brazil by sponsoring inter-institutional research travel by project personnel and by providing training opportunities for American and Brazilian students. This project will produce comprehensive inventories of the vascular plants of Tapajos National Forest and Amazonia National Park. These will be the first such inventories for any comparably sized areas in southeast Amazonia. The project will combine a synthesis of existing data with intensive collecting of herbarium specimens and tissue samples for DNA-based studies. General collecting and plot-based inventory approaches will be implemented to maximize species recovery. Identification of specimens will rely on traditional morphologically based approaches, as well as DNA barcoding. The two inventories will constitute critical datasets for comparison with previously documented Amazonian floras. Project data will be useful for testing hypotheses about the distribution of Amazonian plant diversity and will contribute toward efforts to model projected floristic change. It is highly probable that the research will extend the known limits of plant distributions and will result in the discovery of significant new taxonomic diversity. A web-based conspectus flora will be supported by state-of-the-art informatics technologies and will make project data and other resources broadly available for diverse areas of research that require the accurate identification of plant species. Project data will also be shared with a wide range of international biodiversity data portals and related applications.