Biota Neotrop., vol. 9, no. 4 Species composition of climbers in seasonal semideciduous forest fragments of Southeastern Brazil Karin dos Santos1,4,, Luiza Sumiko Kinoshita2 & Andréia Alves Rezende3 1Department of Phanerogamic Botany, Swedish Museum of Natural History, SE-104 05, Stockholm, Sweden 2Departamento de Botânica, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas – UNICAMP, CP 6109, CEP 13083-970, Campinas, SP, Brazil 3Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Centro Universitário de Rio Preto, Rua Yvette Gabriel Atique, 45, CEP 15025-400, São José do Rio Preto, SP, Brazil 4Author for correspondence: Karin dos Santos, e-mail:
[email protected] SANTOS, K., KINOSHITA, L. S. & REZENDE, A. A. Species composition of climbers in seasonal semideciduous forest fragments of Southeastern Brazil. Biota Neotrop., 9 (4): http://www.biotaneotropica. org.br/v9n4/en/abstract?inventory+bn00309042009. Abstract: In this study we evaluated floristic composition patterns of communities of climbers within ten inventories carried out in semideciduous forest fragments of southeastern Brazil. One of the inventories is original, being carried out for the present study in Ribeirão Cachoeira forest, Campinas, São Paulo State, Southeastern Brazil. This inventory was then pooled together to other nine climbers’ inventories made in other forests of Southeastern Brazil to form a data base, which was examined regarding species richness, similarity, species distribution and climbing methods. The total number of species obtained was 355, belonging to 145 genera and 43 families. The ten most diverse families Bignoniaceae (45 species), Fabaceae (42), Malpighiaceae (36), Asteraceae (31), Apocynaceae (29), Sapindaceae (28), Convolvulaceae (21), Cucurbitaceae (14), Passifloraceae (10), and Euphorbiaceae (8) contributed to 74.4% of the total number of species recorded.