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| Biome Travel Blog: The Savannah |
The savanna. The grassland. A grassy woodland with a significant woody plan component. The map below highlights where vast amounts of Savanna can be found. I have been planning to take an expedition to the vast tropical savanna ecoregion in Brazil known as the cerrado.
The cerrado accounts for 21% of Brasil's land area, as shown below. This portion of land covers the plateaus in the center of Brazil. The cerrado savanna land has many different savanna habitat types. These include the forest savanna, park savanna, wooded savanna and gramineous-woody savanna. The cerrado is well known for being one of the richest of all tropical savanna regions and is home to many unique species.
Before I depart on the journey of a lifetime, I have decided to focus my time in studying the cerrado and learning it's environment as if it were the back of my hand. First lets look at all of the Abiotic Features.
The soil of the cerrado is one of the most important aspect in determining cerrado vegetation. These soils are always well drained and most of the time have low pH and low traces of calcium and magnesium. The weather of a savanna also plays a big part in determining cerrado vegetation. Savannas have warm temperature all year round and really only have two different seasons. A long wet season which has a very dry season mid year. During the wet season, the cerrado has an average of 8 inches of rain per month, but once the dry season comes, there is little to no rain.
After all this research, it was time to move to the fun part: the Biotic Features. Let's start with the autotrophs a.k.a. plants.
The cerrado is characterized by its unique vegetation types. It contains roughly 800 different species of trees, most diverse and important being the Leguminosae, Mapighiacaeae, Myrtaceae, Melastomatacaea, and Rubiaceae. About all of these, the Vochysiaceae is the most important for it dominates the cerrado. The cerrado's vegetation is very similar to that of nearby rain forests, but there are still a lot of unique species. This vegetation is believed to be ancient, stretching back perhaps as far in a prototypic form during the Cretaceous before Agrica and South America seperated. If you would like to go and look at the full list of flora that inhabit the cerrado, click here.There are 10,400 species of vascular plants that are found in the cerrado, nearly half of which are endemic. These flowers below are both endemic to the cerrado.
Now even though the flowers are interesting and all, we cannot simply forget all of the consumers a.k.a animals.
The fauna of the cerrado includes many, although understudied, insects. There are a lot of leaf cutter ants which are very diverse.
There also is a high diversity of vertebrates: 120 reptile species, 837 bird species, 150 amphibian species, and 161 mammal species.
Below, I have images of the most prominent species found. If you would like to look at the full fauna list of the cerrado, click here. and go to the fauna section.
1. Ameiva ameiva (lizard)
2. Colubridae (snake)
3. Hyacinth Macaw (bird)
4. Toco Toucan (bird)
5. South American Tapir (mammal)
6. Giant Otter (mammal)
7. Ocelot (mammal)
Lastly, I am studying the evolutionary adaptions that these species would have had to go through to allow them to survive in this biome. Plants have most definitely adapted. In most grasslands and savannas, it is important that fire maintains the shape of the landscape. The cerrado in no exception. Most of the plants here are fire-adapted, adapting to have characters such as thick corky bark to withstand the heat. As you can see from the food web, this ecosystem has many symbiotic relationships. There are many species in the cerrado that are dependent on each other for survival.
Before I depart on the journey of a lifetime, I have decided to focus my time in studying the cerrado and learning it's environment as if it were the back of my hand. First lets look at all of the Abiotic Features.
The soil of the cerrado is one of the most important aspect in determining cerrado vegetation. These soils are always well drained and most of the time have low pH and low traces of calcium and magnesium. The weather of a savanna also plays a big part in determining cerrado vegetation. Savannas have warm temperature all year round and really only have two different seasons. A long wet season which has a very dry season mid year. During the wet season, the cerrado has an average of 8 inches of rain per month, but once the dry season comes, there is little to no rain.
The cerrado is characterized by its unique vegetation types. It contains roughly 800 different species of trees, most diverse and important being the Leguminosae, Mapighiacaeae, Myrtaceae, Melastomatacaea, and Rubiaceae. About all of these, the Vochysiaceae is the most important for it dominates the cerrado. The cerrado's vegetation is very similar to that of nearby rain forests, but there are still a lot of unique species. This vegetation is believed to be ancient, stretching back perhaps as far in a prototypic form during the Cretaceous before Agrica and South America seperated. If you would like to go and look at the full list of flora that inhabit the cerrado, click here.There are 10,400 species of vascular plants that are found in the cerrado, nearly half of which are endemic. These flowers below are both endemic to the cerrado.
Now even though the flowers are interesting and all, we cannot simply forget all of the consumers a.k.a animals.
The fauna of the cerrado includes many, although understudied, insects. There are a lot of leaf cutter ants which are very diverse.There also is a high diversity of vertebrates: 120 reptile species, 837 bird species, 150 amphibian species, and 161 mammal species.
Below, I have images of the most prominent species found. If you would like to look at the full fauna list of the cerrado, click here. and go to the fauna section.
1. Ameiva ameiva (lizard)
2. Colubridae (snake)
3. Hyacinth Macaw (bird)
4. Toco Toucan (bird)
5. South American Tapir (mammal)
6. Giant Otter (mammal)
7. Ocelot (mammal)
FOOD WEB
Lastly, I am studying the evolutionary adaptions that these species would have had to go through to allow them to survive in this biome. Plants have most definitely adapted. In most grasslands and savannas, it is important that fire maintains the shape of the landscape. The cerrado in no exception. Most of the plants here are fire-adapted, adapting to have characters such as thick corky bark to withstand the heat. As you can see from the food web, this ecosystem has many symbiotic relationships. There are many species in the cerrado that are dependent on each other for survival.
*Place your mouse over each of the pictures to see where I got it from*
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