BACKGROUND:Trait-based ecology has become central for understanding plant form, function and ecosystem processes, but progress has been hampered by biased representation in trait databases. As such, global trait syntheses remain strongly biased towards temperate forest biomes. Tropical savannas are the most extensive, biodiverse and disturbance-driven ecosystems worldwide, yet are poorly represented in functional trait databases, limiting ecological inference and applied decision-making. SCOPE:Here, we introduce the Cerrado Plant Traits (CPT), an open-access initiative compiling and standardising plant functional trait data for the Brazilian Cerrado, the world's most biodiverse tropical savanna. CPT integrates trait information for all major plant organs (whole-plant, root, shoot, leaf, flower, fruit and seed) across vegetation types in the Cerrado, drawing on a collaborative and inclusive research network. The current version of CPT compiles data from 148 datasets, totalling 113,859 curated trait records for 2,134 taxonomically verified species across 150 families. Trait records span pristine, degraded and restored environments and capture both interspecific and intraspecific variation. Whole-plant and leaf traits dominate the current dataset, while belowground and reproductive traits remain comparatively underrepresented, highlighting key priorities for future research. CONCLUSIONS:By substantially increasing the representation of savanna species in global trait repositories, CPT enables tests of ecological hypotheses across multiple levels of organization, analyses of trait-environment relationships across fire, soil and climatic gradients, and robust comparisons across forest-savanna transitions. Beyond its scientific value, CPT provides a practical, standardised resource to support conservation planning, restoration programs and evidence-based policy in a biodiversity hotspot facing accelerating land-use and climate pressures.
Lianas, or woody climbers, are an important component of many tropical forests with fast growth responses to both natural environmental variations and human disturbances. Still, studies on their growth rate are rare to nonexistent. We sampled 22 specimens of Dalbergia frutescens, a liana that produces annual semi-porous growth rings in a secondary Atlantic Rainforest fragment in the megacity of S & atilde;o Paulo, Brazil. This forest fragment went through an intensive management of an exotic and invasive palm species, Archontophoenix cunninghamiana, that resulted in the removal of ca. 14 000 individuals in 2011 and 2012. We assessed the impacts of this management program on the growth of D. frutescens by measuring the tree-ring area in cross sections. Their ages ranged from 6 to 23 years old, and all samples had confluent rings. The occurrence of the confluent rings was not associated with any particular year, indicating that their formation is an intrinsic characteristic of this species. Despite the confluent rings, we successfully built a tree-ring basal area increment chronology spanning from 1995 to 2018. A piecewise regression indicated a growth release in 2014, right after the management of the palm trees. This study demonstrates the potential of tree-ring analysis in lianas as a valuable tool for detecting significant environmental changes and understanding the responses of lianas to natural and anthropogenic disturbances. These findings contribute to the broader understanding of tropical forest dynamics and the role of lianas in tracking ecological changes over time.
In this study, we provide a comprehensive and updated overview of the biogeographic history of several Brazilian phytogeographic domains: the Amazon Rainforest, Brazilian Atlantic Forest, Caatinga, Cerrado, Pampa, and Pantanal. We also outline the main hypotheses that were proposed to explain the distribution patterns and endemism of taxa within these domains. The tropical forests, specifically the Amazon Rainforest and the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, were likely continuous during the Eocene optimum. However, global cooling and increased aridity in the late Eocene and part of the Oligocene led to the fragmentation of these extensive tropical forests. This fragmentation resulted in the creation of the dry diagonal, which includes the Cerrado, Caatinga, Pantanal, and Chaco regions. The dry diagonal served as a geographic barrier, promoting the formation of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest to the East and the Amazon Rainforest to the West. Despite this barrier, forest corridors likely existed between these domains, playing a crucial role in the segregation of the Caatinga from the Cerrado. The Caatinga is the most recent of these domains, having formed in the early to mid-Holocene. The lineages characteristic of the Cerrado likely diversified between the Miocene and early Pliocene.
Thraustochytrids are fungus-like organisms that are the most promising microbial sources for commercial production of industrially important fatty acids. In this study, nineteen Brazilian thraustochytrid isolates were evaluated for their biomass production and fatty acid profile. Aurantiochytrium spp. produced up to 52.87 % of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), while Parietichytrium sarkarianum isolates produced up to 26.59 % of palmitic acid (C16:0) and up to 30.90 % of oleic acid (C18:1), of the total fatty acids. The results suggest the importance of the optimization studies for scale-up production of these fatty acids using the Brazilian isolates.
