02230naa a2200253 a 450000100080000000500110000800800410001910000200006024500800008026000090016030000270016950000810019652014540027765000170173165000130174865000190176165000120178065000220179265300230181465300110183765300230184870000260187177300790189715519251996-10-14       1994    bl ---       0--  u    #d1 aGOTTLIEB, O. R.  aThe diversity of plants. Where is it? Why is it there? What will it become?  c1994  c8 tabelas; 26 figuras.  aApresentado no "Workshop on Ecology and Biodiversity", Rio de Janeiro, 1994.  aThe answer to the first title-question requires pre-qualification of biodiversity. With increasing latitude from the equator to the tropic of capricorn and for morphology-base characteristics of plants, while species-diversity may decline, taxon-diversity indeed increases. Concomitantly, for metabolism-based characteristics, while diversity of shikimate derived phenolics declines, diversity of acetate derived aliphatics increases. Again, there may be more plant species in rain forest plots than in cerrado plots of equal area. However, taxon-diversity is certainly much higher in the latter. With respect to metabolism, for shikimate derived phenolics strong diversity in the rainforest coincides with small diversity in the cerrado. The opposite regularity dominates the distribution of acetate derived aliphatics. The answer to the second title-question: Rainforests are rich in species diversity, but poor in taxon-diversity because speciation leads mostly to closely related woody forms. Only restriction of lignin biosynthesis, whatever the reason, can liberate the otherwise ubiquitous trends in angiosperm evolution towards the numerous more herbaceous taxa. And finally the answer to the third title-question: If alternation between species-diversity and taxon-diversity indeed determines habit of vascular plants, preferential exploitation of forest trees by mankind must have contributed to strengthening of taxon-diversity worldwide.  abiodiversity  ataxonomy  aBiodiversidade  aCerrado  aTaxonomia Vegetal  aNeotropical region  aPlants  aRegiao Neotropical1 aBORIN, M. R. de M. B.  tAnais da Academia Brasileira de Cienciasgv.66, p.55-83, 1994. Suplemento.