Macrophytes assemblages in mountain lakes of Alerce Andino National Park (41° S, Lakes Region, Chile).

Abstract

The lakes studied (Chapo, Sargazo, Chaiquenes and Triángulo) are located in the Alerce Andino National Park (41°30'S, 71°32'W), Chile. An inventory of the aquatic and riparian species was performed between December 2010 and January 2011. A null model analysis was done to determine the existence of regulatory factors of species associations, and the Jaccard index was applied to determine floristic similarities. It identidied 23 species, the high number was reported (14) and the most introduced species number (4) were reported at Sargazo lake, whereas the low species number was observed in Triángulo lake with three species. The analysis of the null model revealed the presence of regulatory factors in one of the three simulations. However, in the other two simulations, the species associations appeared to be random, presumably because many species were repeated at the study sites. According to the Jaccard index, Triángulo Lake is noticeably different from the other lakes, probably due to its marked oligotrophy.