Variación de los rasgos reproductivos en dos comunidades de plantas ubicadas en parcelas con distintos niveles de cobertura vegetal, en el bosque seco tropical colombiano

Abstract

Tropical dry forests are one of the most threatened ecosystems globally. Given the critical state of the dry forest in our country, IAvH has led a monitoring program to generate useful scientific information to help ensure the management and conservation of biodiversity in this type of ecosystem. To date, there are few studies that evaluate the different features of plants at the community level and their potential responses to the different land uses in which the remnants of vegetation are immersed. This study sought to compare the reproductive functional features of two plant communities immersed in places with different levels of anthropogenic disturbance in the department of Tolima. The traits evaluated were pollination mechanism, pollinator type, flower type, petal length, dispersion mechanism, dispersion type, fruit type and length, seed shape and width, for each of them, an intensive bibliographic information search was carried out. Afterwards, statistical tests were carried out such as Shannon diversity index for the two plots, contingency tables and chi-square for each trait evaluated, analysis of variance for trait sizes to know if there were significant differences between them, followed by bar graphs and cakes to visually represent what was previously found. As a result, the traits associated to the reproduction of the evaluated plants do not differ significantly between sites with different levels of land use and anthropic modification, however if the plots are compared between groups independently, if they present significant differences between fruit and seed sizes. Additionally, the animals are fundamental in the pollination and seed dispersal processes of the dry forest, in spite of the strong anthropic interventions that the dry forest has suffered. This study provides new knowledge in terms of the richness of reproductive traits, this subject is of great importance for the ecology of the dry forest since its knowledge is limited and information on each of them is scarce, for this reason, the need arises for these traits to be evaluated in other plots of dry forest in order to have a more solid basis for decision making. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator