FLORA DE CRISTALINA - GO: ENDEMISMO E ESPÉCIES AMEAÇADAS

Abstract

The Brazilian Cerrado is considered one of the global “hotspots” of biodiversity, due to large areas with habitat loss and a rate of endemism. Despite harboring high species richness it is being devastated for agriculture and cattle. Some areas within this region have been neglected in the sense that their biodiversity is not known nor studied; for example, we highlight Municipality of Cristalina, situated in the eastern part of Goiás state, This region is considered one of the main poles of Brazilian agribusiness. Some plant species with distributions restricted to Cristalina have already been recorded as threatened, which allows us to infer the existence of a number of additional species threatened with extinction. Repositories of plant collections comprise an indispensible tool for researchers seeking to record botanical species richness and endemism for a given region or area. Herbaria are collections of dried plants, called exsiccatae, and these assist research by serving as databases, and they are fundamental for scientific identification of flora, in addition to their value for understanding climate change, habitat loss, pollution, and invasive species. That being the case, the objective of the present study is to identify the plant species richness in the municipality and, based on the results of the study, to propose actions for conservation in the area. Therefore, we conducted an exhaustive review of relevant virtual herbaria and developed a list of plant species for Cristalina. We recorded 1569 taxa in 141 botanical families; 48 percent of the plant families recorded for Brazil occur in the study area. If one considers only the Cerrado, more than half (61%) of the plant families recorded for that biome were also recorded for Cristalina. This result confirms the floristic richness of the areas and its importance for harboring the native flora.