PARENT SESSION
Wednesday, August 9, 1:30-5:00 pm
COS 63 - Species richness, species-area relationship, and mid-domain effect
L-14, Lobby Level, Cook Convention Center
Presiders: V Chavez-Varela

The species-area relationship for vascular plants in three habitats in northern Portugal.

Gomes, Inês D^*,1, Pereira, Henrique M^{1, 2}, Vicente, Luís², ¹ Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal² Centro de Biologia Ambiental, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

ABSTRACT- Understanding how diversity in partitioned into different components is of great importance for conservation management. Comparision of diversity patterns across scales often use data from different studies that show a large methodological variation and are confined to specific land use types. We studied the species-area relationship for plant diversity in a nested hierarchy of scales across different habitats - forests, scrubland and agricultural fields. Field studies were conducted in Peneda mountain range, in northwest Portugal. Although there are differences in alpha diversity in the different habitats they show similar values of beta diversity. Slopes of the species-area relationship varied across scales suggesting that different factors are affecting different scales. Similarity between different habitats was calculated at the species and family level. Agricultural fields was the habitat with less similarity with the other two, but in all habitats similarity decreased with distance between plots.

Key words: species-area, diversity, plants