Ecuador: A Mega Diverse Country

Biodiversity is the term used to describe the variety of life found on Earth, it includes ecosystems, genetic and cultural species. Regarding the Flora diversity in forest zones, seedless and seed-bearing plants can be found. The main difference between seedless plants and seed-bearing plants is their methods of reproduction. As their names imply, seed plants produce seeds using sexual reproduction, and seedless plants do not.

Could and warm humid forest have a rich and varied climate conditions. For example, the cloud forest has exuberant and unique vegetation with plants that derive moisture and nutrients from the air and rain, and usually grows on another plant. This kind of plants are called epiphytes and some of them are:

Heliconias

Orchideas

Bromeliads

Additionally, a large quantity of mosses, ferns, arborescent ferns, and lichens can also be found in the cloud forest.

Ferns

Arborescent ferns

Mosses

Linches

In general, these humid forests house plants without seeds, which due to their morphological and functional characteristics maintain solid humidity. Seedless plants are classified in Bryophytes and Pteridophytes.

Bryophytes:

They are also known as nonvascular land plants. They are small simple plants, with no flowers, fruits or vascular systems. They have rhizoids (which are similar to roots), stalks, and leaves, and a capsule with spores for reproduction. Bryophytes exist in a wide variety of habitats, they can be found growing in a range of temperatures from cold arctic to hot deserts, elevations from sea-level to alpine, and moisture such as dry deserts and wet rainforests. Bryophytes can grow where vascularized plants cannot because they do not depend on roots for an uptake of nutrients from soil. Bryophytes can survive on rocks and bare soil. They also need much water to survive. There are three types of bryophytes:

Liverworts

Characterized by a thalloid gametophyte or sometimes an upright leafy gametophyte that resembles a moss.

Hornworts

It is a genus of rootless thin-stemmed aquatic monoecious herbs with female flowers having a single carpel.

Mossess

Characterized by a gametophyte having a small leafy often tufted stem bearing sex organs at its tip; it is also a clump or sward of these plants.

Bryophytes typically measure one to two centimetres tall. The same as all land plants, bryophytes have five life cycles with alternation of generations. In each cycle each of its cells contains a fixed number of unpaired chromosomes, alternates with a diploid sporophyte, whose cell contains two sets of paired chromosomes. Gametophytes produce haploid sperm and eggs which fuse to form diploid zygotes that grow into sporophytes. Sporophytes produce haploid spores by meiosis that grow into gametophytes. Liverworts, mosses and hornworts spend most of their lives as gametophytes.

Pteridophytes:

These are middle-sized plants with vascular systems but with no flowers or fruits. Ferns have rhizomes, and compound leaves called fronds. During reproduction, the underside of fronds release spores rather than seeds, they include the highly diverse true ferns and other graceful, primarily forest-dwelling plants. There are about eleven thousand different species of pteridophytes, making them the most diverse land plants after the flowering plants (angiosperms). Pteridophytes may represent the closest living relatives (sister group) to the seed plants. Pteridophytes have been divided into three classes namely Lycopodophyta (club mosses), Sphenophyta (horse tails) and Filicinophyta (ferns).

Lycopodophyta

The spores of Lycopodiophyta are highly flammable and so have been used in fireworks. It is also under investigation as a possible treatment for Alzheimer's disease.


Sphenophyta

It is a division represented by a single living genus (Equisetum). It has a worldwide distribution but occurs in greater variety in the Northern Hemisphere.

Filicinophyta

There is a characteristic uncurling of the young leaves as they expand into the adult form. Reproduction is by means of spores borne on the underside of specialized leaves.

Seed-bearing plants are varied and widely distributed at different climatic levels. They are an important part of forest, from mangroves, at 100 meters above sea level, up to the herbaceous moorlands, between 2.440 and 4.000 meters above sea level. Seed-bearing plants are classified in Gymnosperms and Angiosperms.

Gymnosperms:

This is the oldest group of vascular plants with flowers and bare seeds which are not considered fruit. These plants are also called conifers because their flowers group together in the form of pines or cones. There are male cones that produce pollen, and female cones that contain ovules. Upon segmentation female cones form seeds that are found between the scales of the cones. Most gymnosperms are trees and bushes, such as pine, cypress, and Podocarpus which found in the Andes Mountains and is one of the endemic species of Ecuador. Gymnosperms are classified in:

Cycadidae

Gynkgidae

Gnetidae

Pinidae

Cupressales

Angiosperms:

This is the most abundant and diverse group of plants on the planet, they are found in all types of ecosystems. Angiosperms have vascular systems, flowers, and fruits. They can be plants, brushes, or trees. Some examples include poppy flowers, roses, olive trees, and thyme, oak, and walnut trees. The modern classifications of angiosperms is: Basal angiosperms and Core angiosperms.

Basal angiosperms are subdivided in Amborella, Nymphaeales, and Austrobaileyales.