Functional diversity of restinga shrub species on the coastal plain of southern brazil

The present study aimed to evaluate the influence of the limiting environmental factors of restinga onmorphoanatomical functional attributes related to the growth and development of shrub species. The study was carried out in 100m² sampling units of resting shrub communities on the coastal plain of southern Brazil. Environmental variables and 27 morphoanatomical attributes of leaves and stems were evaluated. The diversity and functional redundancy of attributes, considering environmental data matrices, functional attributes and the abundance of species, were measured using the software SYNCSA. The functional attributes that maximized convergence among the studied species were, for the leaf: simple leaf blades, alternate phyllotaxis, leaf area, leaf inclination, thickness of palisade parenchyma, thickness of spongy parenchyma, dorsiventral mesophyll and stomatal density. For the stem, the significant attributes were: plant height, wood density, vesselelement length, fiber wall thickness and vessel frequency. The results showed that in spite of the high species diversity, environmental filters imposeoverlap of the shrub species of the restinga communities through convergence of attributes that optimize the use and conservation of resources.