''Manilkara rufula'' is a species of

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

in the Sapodilla family. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...

to the northeastern submontane forests of

Bahia Bahia ( , , ; meaning "bay") is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region of the country. It is the fourth-largest Brazilian state by population (after São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro) and the 5th-largest b ...

Sergipe Sergipe (), officially State of Sergipe, is a state of Brazil. Located in the Northeast Region along the Atlantic coast of the country, Sergipe is the smallest state in Brazil by geographical area at , larger only than the Federal District. Serg ...

Pernambuco Pernambuco () is a States of Brazil, state of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast region of the country. With an estimated population of 9.6 million people as of 2020, making it List of Brazilian states by population, sev ...

, Paraíba, Ceará and Piauí states of

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. Although this species exists in many places, where it occurs it is either not numerous, or its numbers are declining due to loss of habitat.

Ecology

''Manilkara rufula'', along with its speciatic cousins ''M. longifolia'' and ''M. maxima'', provide nectar as food for a

primate Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians ( monkeys and apes, the latter including ...

called the golden-headed lion tamarin ('' Leontopithecus chrysomelas''). Both tree and tamarin are only found in those remnants of Atlantic forest remaining in the northeastern region of Brazil. This habitat has long been disappearing through decades of intensive logging, followed by further disturbance in the converting of logged land to

subsistence farming Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements, with little or no su ...

. What is left of said habitat comprises less than four percent of its original area. These small habitats, islands of forest called "brejos", are fragments of moist forest

caatinga Caatinga (, ) is a type of semi-arid tropical vegetation, and an ecoregion characterized by this vegetation in interior northeastern Brazil. The name "Caatinga" is a Tupi word meaning "white forest" or "white vegetation" (''caa'' = forest, v ...

s, surrounded on every side by either dry forest caatingas, or by

cerrado The ''Cerrado'' (, ) is a vast ecoregion of tropical savanna in eastern Brazil, particularly in the states of Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Tocantins, Minas Gerais, and the Federal District. The core areas of the Cerrado biome are the ...

s, swaths of shrubby vegetation resembling

savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland- grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...

, where ''M. rufula'' cannot grow. Unlike its dryer neighbors, caatinga moist forests occur primarily along inaccessible ridges and on solitary prominences, and are deluged by tropical rains measuring from 1,000 to 1,300 mm annually. ''Manilkara rufula'', along with some of its tree species associates ('' Podocarpus sellowii'', '' Prunus sphaerocarpa'', for example) is a remnant of an earlier climatological regime, when the northeast region as a whole was far moister than most of it is today. A prisoner both geographically and genetically, ''M. rufula'' is prevented from further spread by the less-than-ideal arid growing conditions all around it.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q5434536 rufula Plants described in 1863 Near threatened plants Flora of Brazil Taxonomy articles created by Polbot