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Could epiphytes be xenophobic? Evaluating the use of native versus exotic phorophytes by the vascular epiphytic community in an urban environment

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Abstract

Epiphytes enrich the vegetation cover and provide relevant ecosystem services, which are very important in the urban environment for mitigating air pollution and effects such as heat islands. The majority of tree species used in the urban aforestation are exotic, and their capacity to provide a substratum for epiphytes is not thoroughly exploited. We tested an eventual preference of vascular epiphytes for exotic or native phorophytes in an urban area inside the Atlantic forest domain, evaluating the structure and composition of the studied community in four tree species. There was no preference for native or exotic trees, and the community showed a generalistic pattern in the choice of phorophytes. We hypothesized about other features which could be responsible for the distribution of epiphytes in the urban environment. This study showed that both exotic and native phorophytes can act as satisfactory substratum for the urban vascular epiphytes.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the Pró-Reitoria de Pós Graduação e Pesquisa da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (PROPP – UFJF) (Grant No. ID42002) for the grant awarded to the first author, to Vinícius Antônio de Oliveira Dittrich and Rinaldo Couto Garcia Júnior for the identification of some fern species and to two anonymous reviewers for the improvement of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Campus Universitário, Rua José Lourenço Kelmer S/Nº, São Pedro, Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, CEP 36036-900, Brazil

    Pedro Luiz Sanglard Silva Martins, Samyra Gomes Furtado & Luiz Menini Neto

  2. Departamento de Botânica da, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brazil

    Samyra Gomes Furtado & Luiz Menini Neto

  3. Programa de Pós-graduação da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brazil

    Luiz Menini Neto

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  1. Pedro Luiz Sanglard Silva Martins
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  2. Samyra Gomes Furtado
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Correspondence to Luiz Menini Neto.

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Martins, P.L.S.S., Furtado, S.G. & Menini Neto, L. Could epiphytes be xenophobic? Evaluating the use of native versus exotic phorophytes by the vascular epiphytic community in an urban environment. COMMUNITY ECOLOGY 21, 91–101 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42974-020-00001-y

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