One type of edge effect little explored is that driven by trails. We evaluated the hypothesis that areas with different degrees of distance by a trail would differ in the species composition and diversity of vascular epiphytes in an Atlantic forest fragment in São Paulo, Brazil. We placed twenty plots of 2 × 50 m to mark the phorophytes and to survey the respective epiphytic component. Differences in floristic composition between the impacted areas and no impacted ones were not enough to stablish groups or blocks cohesively in NMDS ordination analysis. The species diversity (richness and evenness) was also similar. It seems that the impact caused by the trail has not been enough to be related with modifications in our epiphytic community. It could be explained by the other environmental variables in the studied stretch or simply because epiphytes not respond to an edge effect like trail effect.
edge effect; evenness; floristic similarity; species richness
