Name: Fernanda Campanharo Favoreto
Type: PhD thesis
Publication date: 23/10/2023
Advisor:

Name	Role
Antelmo Ralph Falqueto	Co-advisor *
Luis Fernando Tavares de Menezes	Advisor *

Examining board:

Name	Role
Antelmo Ralph Falqueto	Advisor *
Dulce Gilson Mantuano	External Examiner *
Elisa Mitsuko Aoyama	Internal Examiner *
Geraldo Rogério Faustini Cuzzuol	Internal Examiner *
José Luiz Alves Silva	External Examiner *

Summary: Functional traits make up the adaptability of species and allow distinguishing ecophysiological strategies
of communities. A group of interest in terms of resistance to stress and distribution of ecophysiological
traits is the Bromeliaceae family, which traditionally has functional types distinguished by strategies for
obtaining water, levels of dependence on soil and/or peltate trichomes and the photosynthetic metabolic
route. Bromeliaceae has the Atlantic Forest as one of its centers of diversity. In this domain, this family
is of great importance in the peripheral restinga and inselberg formations. The objective of this study
was to identify in situ the ecophysiological responses of bromeliads from these formations. In the dry
and rainy seasons, 26 photosynthetic, nutritional and morphological leaf traits were analyzed, in addition
to traits specific to Bromeliaceae, in communities from three restinga sites and three inselberg sites in
the north of Espírito Santo, Brazil. Initially, a comparison was made between the restinga and inselberg
communities, between the rainy and dry seasons and between species throughout the entire period.
Restingas showed lower photochemical and nutritional performance, especially in the dry season.
However, species from both environments do not show a significant drop in the maximum photochemical
efficiency of FSII (ᵩP0) in its general average, demonstrating different adaptation strategies to resource
limitations. Secondly, a cluster analysis was carried out to verify whether the response patterns followed
the functional groups traditionally recognized for the family. The groups formed reflect the history of the
adaptive radiation of the lineages, with distinct patterns between species specialized in restinga,
specialized in inselbergs and species with a distribution common to Atlantic Forest formations. Finally,
modeling was carried out to evaluate the nutritional and morphological basis of chlorophyll a
fluorescence traits, which demonstrated that photosynthetic traits, especially the photochemical
performance index per absorption center (PIABS), are more responsive to nutritional issues
(phosphorus and nitrogen) and water availability. This pattern is partially different from what is expected
from the spectrum of leaf economy and varies between the functional groups traditionally recognized for
the family. Thus, bromeliads respond physiologically in the peripheral environments of the Atlantic
Forest according to their history of adaptive radiation, demonstrating that they are adapted to imitating
resources from these environments, even though they are more susceptible to stress in sandbanks and
present different photosynthetic strategies. These chlorophyll a fluorescence responses respond most
strongly to phosphorus and nitrogen content and available water.