Biodiversity: modelling angiosperms as networks
2000
Gottlieb, O.R. | Borin, M.R. de M.B.
In the neotropics, one of the last biological frontiers, the major ecological concern should not involve local strategies, but global effects often responsible for irreparable damage. For a holistic approach, angiosperms are ideal model systems dominating most land areas of the present world in an astonishing variety of form and function. Recognition of biogeographical patterns requires new methodologies and entails several questions, such as their nature, dynamics and mechanism. Demographical patterns of families, modelled via species dominance, reveal the existence of South American angiosperm networks converging at the central Brazilian plateau. Biodiversity of habitats, measured via taxonomic uniqueness, reveal higher creative power at this point of convergence than in more peripheral regions. Compositional affinities of habitats, measured via bioconnectivity, reveal the decisive role of ecotones in the exchange or redistribution of information, energy and organisms among the ecosystems. Forming dynamic boundaries, ecotones generate and relay evolutionary novelty, and integrate all neotropical ecosystems into a single vegetation net. Connectivity in such plant webs may depend on mycorrhizal links. If sufficiently general such means of metabolic transfer will require revision of the chemical composition of many plants.
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