A quantitative approach on the importance of floral resources in plant communities

Abstract

Biodiversity conservation directly affects the developmental necessities of mankind, and therefore it demands urgent discussions. The establishment of dimensions for preservation areas for all of the species must sustain their populations at a size large enough for perpetuation of the natural genetic stock, and creating the minimum conditions for reproduction of those organisms. The researches of the Ecology of the System who had started up the studies on productivity is forest ecosystems had underestimated importance of flowers and fruits on plant reproduction, because their biomass was considered to be ephemeral and insignificant when it was compared to the total biomass produced. A quantitative approach on the importance of floral biomass is important in this context, since it is involved in plant-animal interactions that are dependent on de capacity of plant species to maintain the consumers of floral resources satisfied enough to keep on foraging inside the community. An estimation of the availability of floral resources is essential, and must be supported by a qualitative evaluation of the floristic composition as the prior indicative of the diversity of floral resources in a plant community, and in the quantitative structure of plant individuals, in order to do some estimation of the importance of each resource after flowering. Some possible quantitative approaches to the these questions are discussed in this paper, concerning some relevant questions related to ecological dominance associated to the produced floral biomass.