Biodiversity & Ecology

English

Abstract: The Vegetation Database of Guaramacal, Andes, Venezuela (GIVD ID SA-VE-001) includes a set of relevés gathered from montane rainforest vegetation. Ramal de Guaramacal is a mountain range extending approximately 30 kilometres northeast towards the eastern end of the Venezuelan Andes; between 9° 05’21’’ N and 70° 00’20’’ W. The data were collected within the framework of a project aiming to study the floristic and vegetation diversity of the Guaramacal National Park. The forest data contains a total of 44 samples, collected by the author from 1995 to 2006. They are located at different altitudes between 1,300 and 3,000 m, distributed throughout the different Park sectors. The data were used to characterize the montane rainforest vegetation of Ramal de Guaramacal and to establish a syntaxonomic scheme which represents the first attempt to classify the vegetation phytosociologically based on a quantitative data set from an entire mountain range in the Venezuelan Andes. An analysis of forest functional diversity changes with altitude has also been performed based on the forest database.