Crinodendron brasiliense

The aim of this project is to understand basic biological and ecological aspects of Cinzeiro-Pataguá (Crinodendron brasiliense). Crinodendron brasiliense is a narrow endemic tree species that occurs restricted to montane cloud forests in the highlands of southern Brazil. The tree became endangered of extinction (IUCN) in 2018 due to its small population size and restricted area of occurrence. Currently, the species is still absent in the state red list of threatened species and urges for conservation initiatives. Therefore, this project aims to better understand biological and ecological aspects of this species to create conservation measures to ensure its survival.

To achieve this goal, we expect to:

1. Understand fruit and seed morphology;
2. Characterize germination and initial growth parameters;
3. Investigate which factors affect the population structure;

The background study for this project was the IUCN assessment in 2018 (Sühs, 2018), which placed the species as Endangered (EN) in IUCN threat categories. This project is being developed in partnership with Prof. Dr. Eduardo Luís Hettwer Giehl at Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Project participants are:

• Johnny Silveira
• Sofía Casali
• Sophia Kusterko

Supplementary notes

IUCN assessment

Local news article (web)