Effects of management regimes on structure, composition and diversity of seasonally inundated herbaceous communities in the Mkomazi National Park, Tanzania

Abstract

The effects of management regimes on structural composition and diversity of seasonally inundated herbaceous communities were investigated in the Mkomazi National Park, Tanzania. Three sites were selected based on management regimes, that is "fire-grazing" (FG), "fire-no grazing" (FNG) and "no fire-no grazing" (NFNG), and sampled in the 2015 wet season. The studied vegetation parameters resulted significantly different across the sites, with the exceptions of species abundance between NFNG versus FG and NFNG versus FNG sites and species evenness, which remained constant among sites. A significantly higher species richness, Shannon diversity Index, standing biomass and percentage vegetation cover was detected at FNG site, than in the other sites. No significant differences arose when comparing FG and NFNG sites. Although the responses we found may in part be caused by confounding underlying variables such as variation in soil type, soil moisture or elevation, the patterns found may contribute to a more general understanding of the effects of management regimes in seasonally inundated savannah, as well as to sound approaches in environmental conservation and management. However, further research is needed to support our findings, replicating the study in other areas under the same or similar management conditions and in a wider array of ecosystems. R esum e Nous avons etudi e les effets de diff erents r egimes de gestion sur la composition structurelle et la diversit e de communaut es herbac ees, inond ees selon les saisons, dans le Parc National de Mkomazi, en Tanzanie. Nous avons s electionn e trois sites en fonction du r egime de gestion, a savoir feux-pâturage (FG), feux-pas de pâturage (FNG) et pas de feux-pas de pâturage (NFNG) et nous y avons pr elev e des echantillons pendant la saison des pluies de 2015. Les param etres de la v eg etation etudi es etaient significativement diff erents dans les trois sites, a l'exception de l'abondance des esp eces entre NFNG et FG, et entre NFNG et FNG, et de la r egularit e des esp eces qui restait constante dans les sites. Nous avons d etect e une richesse en esp eces, un Indice de diversit e de Shannon, une biomasse a erienne et un pourcentage de la couverture v eg etale significativement plus grands sur le site FNG que sur les autres. Aucune diff erence marqu ee n'est apparue lors de la comparaison des sites FG et NFNG. Même si les r eponses que nous avons obtenues peuventêtre dues en

Intraspecific variability of leaf traits and functional strategy of Himantoglossum adriaticum H. Baumann

“…The scheme has been so far adopted at different levels of organization, worldwide (e.g. Yildirim et al 2012;Astuti et al 2019;Giupponi and Giorgi 2019;Nyakunga et al 2018), and values on CSR strategy are currently available for several species (Cerabolini et al 2010;Pierce et al 2017). In most trait databases, species are described by mean trait values, regardless of environmental or genetic context (Albert et al 2010), mostly due to the search for general patterns (Albert et al 2011).…”

Figure 2 from: Baltieri M, Fantinato E, Del Vecchio S, Buffa G (2020) Intraspecific variability of leaf traits and functional strategy of Himantoglossum adriaticum H. Baumann. Plant Sociology 57(2): 105-112. https://doi.org/10.3897/pls2020572/03

“…The scheme has been so far adopted at different levels of organization, worldwide (e.g. Yildirim et al 2012;Astuti et al 2019;Giupponi and Giorgi 2019;Nyakunga et al 2018), and values on CSR strategy are currently available for several species (Cerabolini et al 2010;Pierce et al 2017). In most trait databases, species are described by mean trait values, regardless of environmental or genetic context (Albert et al 2010), mostly due to the search for general patterns (Albert et al 2011).…”