26 The woody SDF endemics do not include the Equatorial Pacific endemics A SDF area of the political unit below 1,100 m.a.s.l.

aPeru: van der Werff and Consiglio (2004); Ecuador: Jørgensen and León-Yánez (1999) bPeru: Bracko and Zarucchi (1993) cEcuador: Jørgensen and León-Yánez (1999) dPeru: León et al. (2006) eEcuador: Valencia et al. (2000) Discussion Patterns of species Epacadostat purchase richness, endemism and distribution In the first comprehensive review of the floristics of neotropical SDF Alwyn Gentry (1995) noted that SDF ecosystems were less species rich and contained only a subset of the plant diversity found in the more humid forests. The lower diversity in the Equatorial Pacific SDFs is clearly due to the low levels of diversity within families and genera. A notable exception is Leguminosae. This www.selleckchem.com/products/acalabrutinib.html family showed high levels of diversity at the generic (34 genera, 19% of the total), specific (70 species, 22% of the total) and endemic species level (15 endemics, 21% of the total). This is not surprising since several studies

have shown that this family is among the most, if not the most, prominent members of SDF in the Neotropics (Gentry 1995; Pennington et al. 2006). Malvaceae, on the contrary, are not necessarily regarded as important constituents of tropical dry forest communities (Pennington et al. 2006). Our data indicated that it is by far the second most important family contributing to the number of ABT-737 in vivo genera (15 genera, 8% of the total), FER species (19 species, 6% of the total) and endemic species (6 species,

9% of all endemics), although our results were based on an expanded Malvaceae concept (including 14 species from the former Sterculiaceae, Tilliaceae and Bombacaceae). Especially interesting was the subfamily Bombacoideae, contributing with several taxa (9 species, 6 genera). Gentry (1993), referring to the northern Peruvian SDFs already stated, “Fabaceae is the most speciose and dominant family of trees. Bombacaceae, though less speciose, are represented by five different genera of large trees and are probably more dominant here than elsewhere on earth”, a statement that we can certainly extend to the SDFs in the Equatorial Pacific region. A narrow concept of Malvaceae would place Boraginaceae, Cactaceae and Moraceae in second place, all with 12 species. In contrast to the low generic and specific diversity (as compared to humid rainforests), levels of endemism seem to be among the highest in the continent. We found 67 endemic species, which represent 21% of the total of woody SDF species reported in the Equatorial Pacific region. This percentage is similar to what Dodson and Gentry (1991) reported for the flora of a SDF in Ecuador and similar to their total estimate for the entire dry forest region in western lowland Ecuador. Considering only SDFs, they estimated that 19% of the species should be endemic (approximately 190 species). The whole flora of the region, including other vegetation types below 900 m.a.s.l.