{"id":495,"date":"2013-12-18T16:25:37","date_gmt":"2013-12-18T21:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nybg.org\/science-talk\/?p=495"},"modified":"2013-12-19T09:30:55","modified_gmt":"2013-12-19T14:30:55","slug":"journey-to-brazil-finding-only-one-where-once-there-were-many","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2013\/12\/journey-to-brazil-finding-only-one-where-once-there-were-many\/","title":{"rendered":"Journey to Brazil: Finding Only One Where Once There Were Many"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott A. Mori<\/a>, Ph.D., is the Nathaniel Lord Britton Curator of Botany at The New York Botanical Garden<\/a>. Nate Smith is an Honorary Research Associate at the Botanical Garden, and Fernando Matos is a Ph.D. student of the Garden’s Institute of Systematic Botany. Michel Ribeiro is a student at the Universidade Federal de Esp\u00edrito Santo, Brazil, and Anderson Alves-Ara\u00fajo serves as one of his advisers. This is the last in a three-part series<\/a> documenting Dr. Mori’s recent trip to Brazil.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\"A<\/a>
A large forest tree (Manilkara bella<\/em>) standing alone amidst a sea of coffee plants.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As I wrote in my last post<\/a>, my colleagues and I recently searched for species of the Brazil nut family in the fragmented Atlantic coastal forests of the Brazilian state of Esp\u00edrito Santo<\/a>.\u00a0 There are only 12 species of this family (whose scientific name is Lecythidaceae) in the entire state, but some of the species in northern Esp\u00edrito Santo are endemic<\/a>, meaning they are found only there. The goal of our field work was to evaluate the conservation status of Lecythidaceae in this biologically rich but endangered part of Brazil.
\n
\nA study published<\/a>\u00a0in 1981 suggested that 53.5 percent of the tree species growing in the Atlantic forest of eastern Brazil are\u00a0endemic to that region. Evidence from bird, reptile, primate, and butterfly distributions supports the hypothesis that the coastal forest of eastern Brazil is a center of endemism for animals as well as plants.\u00a0But large-scale deforestation, which began when early colonists cleared forests to establish sugar cane plantations, has reduced the original coastal forest to less than 10 percent of its original extent in some places. Because of this, the region has been\u00a0classified as one of the world\u2019s\u00a0biodiversity hotspots<\/a>,\u00a0and the Brazilian government has made considerable efforts to protect what forests are left.<\/p>\n

\"Both<\/a>
Both collections of Eschweilera complanata<\/em>, an endangered species found only in southern Bahia and northern Esp\u00edrito Santo, were collected in degraded habitats such as this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Esp\u00edrito Santo, which is north of Rio de Janeiro, exhibits a beautiful mosaic of agricultural fields and plantations, especially during the rainy season. Spreading over vast areas, the dark green shrubs of coffee plantations and the lighter green crowns and slender trunks of cultivated, non-native eucalyptus trees are impressive. Cattle pasture and fields of papaya, black pepper, sugar cane, sweet manioc, corn, macadamia, rubber, and banana are interspersed among the coffee and eucalyptus plantations. Apart from the few small biological reserves, there are no stands of undisturbed old growth forest anywhere. Forests with many different tree species have been replaced by monocultures of coffee such as that seen in the accompanying image of a\u00a0ma\u00e7aranduba<\/em>\u00a0tree (Manilkara bella<\/em>\u00a0of the plant family Sapotaceae) towering above the coffee plants surrounding it. This landscape\u00a0has been so drastically\u00a0modified that places which once included hundreds of tree species in just a couple of acres now often harbor only one\u2014the species under cultivation!<\/p>\n

The fast-growing eucalyptus tree, which is native to Australia, is an unbelievably productive source of timber and pulp wood. The technology developed to plant the seeds, maintain the plantations weed-free, trim the lower branches, and cut and transport the logs to paper mills is exceedingly efficient and astonishing to witness. For an example, click here<\/a> to see the way eucalyptus logs are harvested.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The barren understory of a eucalyptus plantation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Six of the 12 known species of the Brazil nut family in Esp\u00edrito Santo are threatened with extinction because they are found only in\u00a0the area around Rio de Janeiro, in remnant forests in Esp\u00edrito Santo, and in the southern part of the state of Bahia just to the north of Esp\u00edrito Santo. We are grateful that Brazilian conservationists are doing what they can to protect remaining forests and hope that what we have discovered about species of the Brazil nut family on our expedition demonstrates how important it is to protect the remaining\u00a0forest\u00a0before the only\u00a0trees that are left arise here and there from a landscape covered by cultivated plants.<\/p>\n

Support for our visits to herbaria and for field work in eastern Brazil was provided by the\u00a0<\/em>Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund<\/em><\/a>, the\u00a0<\/em>Federal University of Espir\u00edto Santo<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0the\u00a0<\/em>School of Tropical Botany of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden<\/em><\/a>, and the\u00a0<\/em>INCT-Virtual Herb\u00e1rio da Flora e dos Fungos<\/em><\/a>\u00a0of the Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Ci\u00eancia e Technologia.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The conclusion of Scott Mori’s trek through the forests of Brazil, where agriculture has wreaked havoc on biodiversity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[116],"tags":[132,117,146,130,145,129,118,133,131,71],"yoast_head":"\nJourney to Brazil: Finding Only One Where Once There Were Many - Science Talk Archive<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2013\/12\/journey-to-brazil-finding-only-one-where-once-there-were-many\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Journey to Brazil: Finding Only One Where Once There Were Many - 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