Rarefaction, richness estimation and extrapolation methods in the evaluation of unseen plant diversity in aquatic ecosystems.

Highlights: [•] We present one of the first phytosociological surveys on aquatic plant communities in Brazil. [•] We use the studied ecosystem as a model to assess sampling issues in aquatic ecosystems. [•] We used rarefaction, extrapolation and richness estimators to evaluate sampling effort. [•] We show how this mathematical framework can be employed as a sampling evaluation tool by field botanists. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]