Population dynamics and palm species' life history: a framework to estimate the fruit harvesting impacts

• Grant number: 12/17475-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: January 01, 2013
• End date: December 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Applied Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Flavio Antonio Maës dos Santos
• Grantee: Maurício Bonesso Sampaio
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biologia (IB). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Fruits of palm species frequently have economic value. Therefore, harvesting activities tends to be higher than the ecologically sustainable level. To avoid over-exploitation of fruits is important to establish sustainable harvesting levels based on long term demographic data. The response of a plant population to perturbation is influenced by species' life history characteristics. According to Demographic Triangle, herbs has higher investment in fecundity than trees, and hence, herbs are likely to be more influenced by fruit harvesting than all other plant life histories. There are a huge variability of life history among palm species, mainly on individual size, growth type, reproductive strategy and occurrence habitats. Thus, we expect that the impact of fruit harvesting differs among palm species with different life histories. This study proposal have the objective of evaluate the correlation between life history characteristics of palm species and fruit harvesting effects on population ecology. We will obtain demographic data from bibliographic references at least for 37 palm species and collect complementary field data for other four species. We will estimate the population growth rate elasticities to survival, reproduction and fecundity by matrix models or Integral Projection Models (IPM) to each study species. We will calculate the correlation among the elasticities and the life history characteristics of palm species. We will also assess the effects of five fruit harvesting intensities on the population dynamics of palm species by numeric simulation. The extrapolation of this results will be applicable to forecast the fruit harvesting impacts on population ecology of palm species which do not have available long term demographic data. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

AMADEU, LUA S. N.; SAMPAIO, MAURICIO B.; DOS SANTOS, FLAVIO A. M.. Influence of light and plant size on the reproduction and growth of small palm tree species: Comparing two methods for measuring canopy openness. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY, v. 103, n. 9, p. 1678-1686, SEP 2016. (12/17475-9)

CAIO J. R. S. SOARES; MAURICIO B. SAMPAIO; FRANCISCO S. SANTOS-FILHO; FERNANDO R. MARTINS; FLAVIO A. M. DOS SANTOS. Patterns of species diversity in different spatial scales and spatial heterogeneity on beta diversity. Acta Botanica Brasilica, v. 34, n. 1, p. 9-16, 2019-11-11. (12/17475-9)