Structure and composition of the orchids community in two zones to the Nature Reserve “La Montaña del Ocaso” Quimbaya - Quindio

Abstract

It was made a comparative study in two zones of the natural reserve “La Montaña del Ocaso”, studying the orchids' community composition and structure in relationship with the associated vegetation, resulting the registration of 18 orchid species distributed in 14 genuses, with 3 new reports for the reserve: Ponera striata, Pelexia laxa and Jacquiniella teretifolia. In the mixed guaduales, 10 orchids species were recorded, in the secondary forest 3 species, and 5 species are recurring in the two zones. About the related vegetation to the orchids' community, it was found that 41 plant species are organized in 21 botanic families; in the secondary forest it was found 20 species, 5 in Guaduales mixed zone, and 16 related species in the two zones. From the total recording, 9 host orchids, where S. longicaulis (the most dominant species) was distributed in 7 of the 9. A component analysis was used to observe the distribution and orchids' substrates preference, finding out that the height with the bigger number of species was 13 m, and lichen was the substrate with the highest frequency of species. We assessed Shannon, Simpson, equitability and wealth indices for the two zones with Statistic software, resulting that for the secondary forest, diversity is low and for the mixed guaduales, dominance was presented in the two zones according to the Simpson index, however, there were significant differences between the zones on these indices, while there were not differences in equitability and richness.