2 Total selleckchem species number and number of species in mayor life form categories (broad bars) as well as frequency (narrow bars) of economically useful Araceae and Bromeliaceae in Bolivia according to ecoregions (arranged by ascending number of arid months). The narrow bars distinguish frequent (black, recorded in >50% of all study plots), infrequent (white, <50%) and rare species (no bars, not recorded by us) per life form category. Ecoregions

are arranged by ascending number of arid months, their abbreviations follow Table 1 Fig. 3 Proportion of the current geographical distribution of useful species of Araceae (n = 74) and Bromeliaceae (n = 83). Classified into endemic: only one country (Bolivia), narrow: two or three countries, and wide: more than four countries Fig. 4 Habitat preferences of useful species of Araceae and Bromeliaceae in six ecoregions of Bolivia. Ecoregions are arranged by ascending number of arid months, their abbreviations follow Table 1 Fig. 5 Number of economically useful species of Araceae and Bromeliaceae in ten ecoregions of Bolivia. Multiple counts are possible. Multipurpose species contain those

with more than three uses. Ecoregions are arranged click here by ascending Progesterone number of arid months, their abbreviations follow Table 1 Results The number of species per ecoregion showed a very clear pattern in Araceae, with by far most species present in the most humid vegetation types, especially Amazonian forest and the humid montane Yungas forest of the eastern Andean slope (Fig. 2). In both regions, hemi-epiphytic species made up roughly half of all species. In some of the dryer vegetation types, such as Chiquitano and

Tucumano-Bolivian forest, terrestrial species were dominant (Fig. 2). The absolute and relative number of species with high frequency was highest in Amazonian and Yungas forest, but very low in all other ecoregions. Useful aroids have mostly a wide geographical distribution (Fig. 3), several of these even reaching into Mesoamerica. In the Amazonian region, Chaco, and inter-Andean valleys they mainly showed no clear habitat preferences, whereas in the humid regions such as Yungas, Tucumano-Boliviano and savannas, they showed marked preferences for certain habitats (Fig. 4). The predominance of useful species in the more humid vegetation types (Fig. 5) was especially pronounced for ornamental, medicinal, and food plants.