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Neotropical ferns community phenology: climatic triggers in subtropical climate in Araucaria forest

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Abstract

Climate regulates the fern phenology and climatic triggers influence plants from tropical and subtropical regions differently. Ferns depend on climate to regulate their life cycle, because they do not require animal interaction to reproduce. Through the pioneering study of the phenology of Araucaria forest understory in subtropical climate of Brazil, our main aims were (i) to verify which climatic variables influenced the phenological pattern of the community, (ii) to identify the differences in seasonality of ferns in distinct climatic zones of Brazil, and (iii) to compare the phenological pattern of ferns growing in other subtropical regions of the world. In an Araucaria forest fragment, we monitored the phenology of the fern community (leaf production, leaf senescence, and sporangium formation) over 2 years. At the same time, we collected photoperiod, temperature, and precipitation data. Ferns phenology was classified as continuous, discontinuous, regular, and irregular. Our results showed photoperiod and mean temperature as the best predictors for phenology. The reproductive event was seasonal, and the fern community presented themselves as continuous, irregular (activity index), and regular (intensity index) phenophases. Unlike ferns from tropical regions that generally regulate themselves by the rainfall, some ferns in a non-seasonal environment have seasonal behavior in their phenophases due to the greater amplitude of photoperiod and temperature. The community showed the same pattern of leaf production observed in populations of other subtropical regions in the world. This behavior represented the biological response of the vegetation dynamics in relation to the climatic variability of subtropical environment.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Feevale University infrastructure.

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa (CNPq process no. 409972/2016-9); scholarships granted by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) for AM and TOHP, by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul (FAPERGS) to MZC, by CNPq to the CSF and JLS is supported by CNPq (PQ-308926/2017-0).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Ciências da Saúde, Laboratório de Botânica, Universidade Feevale, ERS-239, 2755, Novo Hamburgo, RS, 93525-075, Brazil

    Andressa Müller, Marina Zimmer Correa, Camila Storck Führ, Thábia Ottília Hofstetter Padoin & Jairo Lizandro Schmitt

  2. Programa de Pós-graduação em Qualidade Ambiental, Universidade Feevale, Novo Hamburgo, RS, Brazil

    Andressa Müller, Thábia Ottília Hofstetter Padoin, Daniela Müller de Quevedo & Jairo Lizandro Schmitt

  3. Instituto de Ciências Sociais Aplicadas, Universidade Feevale, Novo Hamburgo, RS, Brazil

    Daniela Müller de Quevedo

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  1. Andressa Müller
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Correspondence to Andressa Müller.

Electronic supplementary material

ESM 1

Partial residual plots of the significant covariates in the best GAMLSS model to activity index. (PDF 107 kb)

ESM 2

Partial residual plots of the significant covariates in the best GAMLSS model to intensity index. (PDF 109 kb)

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Müller, A., Correa, M.Z., Führ, C.S. et al. Neotropical ferns community phenology: climatic triggers in subtropical climate in Araucaria forest. Int J Biometeorol 63, 1393–1404 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-019-01755-5

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