Abstract

APONTE, Héctor  and  CANO, Asunción. Vascular flora of the Carquín-Hualmay Wetland (Huaura, Lima, Peru). Ecol. apl. [online]. 2018, vol.17, n.1, pp.69-76. ISSN 1726-2216.  http://dx.doi.org/10.21704/rea.v17i1.1175.

Coastal wetlands, along with the lomas formations and riverine ecosystems comprise an important biological corridor along the Peruvian-Chilean coast. The objective of this work was to study the vascular flora of a wetland located between the districts of Carquín and Hualmay in the province of Huaura (Lima, Peru). There are 41 species of vascular plants, of which 18 are Monocotyledons, 22 are Eudicotyledons and one Pteridophyte; the most abundant families were Poaceae (7 species) and Cyperaceae (5 species). The 100% correspond to herbaceous or subfruticous plants; 12% of the total species are floating or submerged aquatic plants. Sixty-eight percent of the species (28 taxa) have reported at least one use, being more abundant those of medicinal use. The results obtained show that this wetland has a floristic richness higher than the current records of the Albufera de Medio Mundo (21 species), Ventanilla (20 species), Laguna El Paraíso (27) and Humedales de Puerto Viejo (32), but lesser than those reported for Humedales de Santa Rosa (67) and Pantanos de Villa (51). The analysis of similarity between localities shows that this wetland bears little resemblance to the other coastal wetlands (0.31 on average for the Jaccard index), reinforcing the idea that the beta diversity of coastal wetlands is high at the regional level. The data for the number of species per hectare indicate that the Carquín-Hualmay wetland is the wetland with the highest number of vascular plant species per hectare along the entire coast of Lima, with 3.4 sp./ha. The results show that this wetland is an important refuge for wildlife and must be conserved it as part of the biological corridor of the coast of Lima.

Keywords : diversity; flora; conservation; wetlands.

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