Aiphanes - Distribution and Status

Distribution and Status

The genus Aiphanes ranges from the Dominican Republic and Panama in the north, to Trinidad and Tobago in the east, across Colombia and down along the Andes to Bolivia. In Brazil it only occurs along the border with Peru. Aiphanes is primarily South American—one species (A. hirsuta) is present in Panama and two others (A. horrida and A. minima) are found in the Caribbean. Aiphanes minima, which is endemic to the insular Caribbean, is the only species absent from the South American mainland. Although A. horrida has been reported from Guyana and southern Venezuela these reports have not been verified with herbarium vouchers.

Aiphanes horrida is the most widely distributed species. It ranges from Trinidad to Bolivia but is absent from Ecuador and northern Peru. Other species have narrower ranges with one centre of diversity in western Colombia and Ecuador and another minor one in northeastern Peru. The 2006 IUCN Red List includes three species which are endangered by habitat destruction—A. grandis, A. leiostachys and A verrucosa—and three others considered vulnerable to the same threat—A. chiribogensis, A. duquei and A. lindeniana. Rodrigo Bernal and Gloria Galeano expanded this list in a 2005 review of the status of Colombian palms. They listed two species as critically endangered—A. graminifolia, a species that was first described in 2002, and A. leiostachys (which was classified as endangered in the IUCN Red List). They classified two species as endangered—A. acaulis and A. parvifolia—and two species as vulnerable—A. gelatinosa and A. pilaris. They also classified six species as near threatened—A. erinacea, A. hirsuta, A. lindeniana (vulnerable according to the IUCN Red List), A. linearis, A. macroloba and A. simplex. The threats to these species were not listed, but Jens-Christian Svenning reported that A. erinacea was threatened by logging given its limited distribution and poor ability to regenerate in disturbed forests. In addition to these, A. deltoidea, which is widely distributed across the western Amazon Rainforest, is present at such low densities that it was classified as a rare species by Francis Kahn and Farana Moussa in 1994.