Aquatic plants are vegetables that represent great importance in aquatic ecosystems, of which
we can mention, production of a large amount of biomass that influences the dynamics of
ecosystems; morphological complexity, which provides habitat variability for a diversity of
species; physical structure of the environment, used by several aquatic animals. Studies that
deal with the contribution of functional diversity in the composition and structuring of the
aquatic plant assembly, have been addressed in different studies. There are numerous ways to
analyze the functional diversity of an assembly, the most common of which is precisely
adopted in the present study, and refers to the recognition of the number of functional groups,
closely associated with the richness of species and the composition of the community. The
present study was carried out in four tributaries of the Luís Eduardo Magalhães Hydroelectric
Power Plant reservoir, in the State of Tocantins (Areias, Mangues, Santa Luzia and Água Suja)
and a stretch located between the fluvial and intermediate region of the main body of the
Tocantins River, in the municipality of Porto Nacional. Seven functional traits were chosen,
which strongly influence the performance of an organism in terms of growth, survival and
reproduction. Through the functional dendrogram, 14 functional groups were recognized, with
the biological form and the type of reproduction the attributes that most contributed to the
definition of the functional groups. Through the results achieved, it was clearly verified that
by identifying the functional relationships shared by the species, it is possible to better
understand what the ecosystem functions, and how the variation in the characteristics of the
species influence this functioning.
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