Biodiversidade de algas no Herbário MAC: levantamento de espécies e padrões de distribuição

Abstract

Herbaria are important sources of botanical and phycological records, containing information that helps to understand the local flora contained in their collections. This research avaliated the 2287 existing algae exsicates in the MAC Herbarium archive, witch is curated by the Alagoas Environmental Institute, with the aim of collecting the main data of its catalogue and how the distribution pattern analysis of these macroalgae can better the understanding of the Brazilian marine coastal ecosystem, with emphasis on the part belonging to the State of Alagoas. In the studied exsicates, 221 taxa were found, distributed in the phyla Chlorophyta (65), Ochrophyta (38) and Rhodophyta (118). The Shannon diversity index, abundance and species richness based on the Simpson index were calculated in all of the 42 sites identified on the data research, as well as the occurrence frequency of each phyllum specimen. Chlorophyta and Ochrophyta represented 2,485 and 1,946 of the Shannon diversity, respectively. Rhodophyta, on the other hand, showed the greater diversity (2.94) of families and individuals, being considered frequent (45.24%) in relation to the other phylla, which suggests a possible dominance of them in the marine environment, in specific places of the littoral. The archival studies are extremely important in order to form the bases of the studies for future works, as well as highlighting the need for a greater focus on herbarium collections as excellent tools for access to knowledge.