“Weeds plants” of the Caatinga, a floristic approach

Abstract

This work aimed an analysis of studies on the floristics of the plants considered weeds present in the crops of Caatinga. Data were obtained from 40 scientific articles from academic journals available on the Google Scholar online platform. Morphological, ecological and biogeographical information of the species was collected, also evaluating the similarity and regression analysis of the sampled areas. 179 species were identified, 55 of them are considered exotic. In the floristic assemblages, herbaceous, therophytic, autochorous and pantropical species predominated. The evaluated agrosystems adopted low similarity among themselves, revealing more heterogeneous floras than expected, not following the model foreseen in the The Theory of Island Biogeography. The regression analysis indicated a non-significant relationship between geographic distance and the Jaccard index. Thus, the results show that weeds in the Caatinga, despite being composed of generalist species with wide geographical distribution, their assemblages are structured differently.