Lichen community from an endangered forest in central Argentina

EDITH FILIPPINI; JUAN MANUEL RODRIGUEZ; CECILIA ESTRABOU

Lazaroa

Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Lugar: Madrid; Año: 2014

0210-9778

We studied a lichen community from a 300 ha Espinal native forest under different types of management defined in sectors: temporary grazing; adjacent crops; landscaped and preserved. We observed 20 trees in each sector, identified lichen species and measured coverage in grids of 0.2 x 0.2 m. We compared alpha and beta diversity plus coverage by sector using the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests. We also applied a Multiple Response Permutation Procedure, a Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling multivariate analysis and the Indicator Species Analysis to test associations. We found 34 species of lichens. Physciaceae was the dominant family in the community. Total lichen coverage was higher in the temporary grazing sector and minor in the preserved sector. No significant differences were found in alpha diversity among sectors, however, beta diversity was higher in the preserved one. Multivariate analysis also showed that different management determines changes in the community composition.