title: Ecological adaptation of wild peach palm, its in situ conservation and deforestation-mediated extinction in southern Brazilian Amazonia.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The Arc of Fire across southern Amazonia seasonally attracts worldwide attention as forests are cut and burned for agricultural expansion. These forests contain numerous wild relatives of native South American crops, such as peach palm.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Our prospecting expeditions examined critical areas for wild peach palm in the Arc of Fire in Mato Grosso, Pará, Maranhão and Tocantins, as well as areas not previously examined in Amazonas and Amapá states. Recent digitization of the RADAM Brasil project permitted comparison among RADAM's parataxonomists' observations, previous botanical collections and our prospecting. Mapping on soils and vegetation types enabled us to hypothesize a set of ecological preferences. Wild peach palm is best adapted to Ultisols (Acrisols) in open forests across the Arc of Fire and westward into the more humid western Amazonia. Populations are generally small (fewer than 10 plants) on slopes above watercourses. In northern Mato Grosso and southern Pará soybean fields and pastures now occupy numerous areas where RADAM identified wild peach palm. The controversial BR-163 Highway is already eroding wild peach palm as deforestation expands.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Many of these populations are now isolated by increasing forest fragmentation, which will lead to decreased reproduction via inbreeding depression and eventual extinction even without complete deforestation. Federal conservation areas are less numerous in the Arc of Fire than in other parts of Brazilian Amazonia, although there are indigenous lands; these conservation areas contain viable populations of wild peach palm and require better protection than they are currently receiving. Ex situ conservation of these populations is not viable given the relative lack of importance of domesticated peach palm and the difficulty of maintaining even economically interesting genetic resources.
authors.affiliation: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Manaus, Amazonas, Brasil.
authors.forename: Charles R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Clement
authors.forename: Ronaldo P
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Santos
authors.forename: Sylvain J M
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Desmouliere
authors.forename: Evandro J L
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Ferreira
authors.forename: João Tomé Farias
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Neto
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D028023:Arecaceae; D001938:Brazil; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D017753:Ecosystem; D053476:Extinction, Biological; D005390:Fires; D005843:Geography