Environmental drivers of the composition and diversity of the herb layer in mixed temperate forests in Hungary

Márialigeti, Sára; Tinya, Flóra; Bidló, András; Odór, Péter

doi:10.1007/s11258-016-0599-4

Cited by 66 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…The connection between deciduous and mixed forests is given by the presence and abundance of herbaceous species (e.g., Dysopsis glechomoides, Gavilea lutea, Viola magellanica) that naturally grown under closed canopies but benefiting from smallscale disturbances at canopy level. Microclimatic conditions could varies more widely in deciduous and mixed forest stands than in evergreen stands, in response to the annual gradient of light, influencing soil properties (Gazol and Ibáñez, 2010;Yu and Sun 2013;Márialigeti et al 2016). This generates more diverse site conditions over short distances and thus more habitat opportunities for a wide variety of plants.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…avoiding erosion and generating suitable microenvironments for other species development (Simonson et al 2014). However, understory plants have heterogeneous composition, structure and distribution patterns, which depend on the overstory species, forest structure, micro-environmental and stand conditions (e.g., Márialigeti et al 2016;Tinya and Ódor 2016). Moreover, understory could provide habitat and resource specificity to sustain rare or exclusive species in the herbaceous layer, which have excellent potential for use as biodiversity indicators (Spyreas and Matthews 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The influence of canopy-layer composition on understory plant diversity in southern temperate forests

et al. 2017

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Background: Understory plants represents the largest component of biodiversity in most forest ecosystems and plays a key role in forest functioning. Despite their importance, the influence of overstory-layer composition on understory plant diversity is relatively poorly understood within deciduous-evergreen broadleaved mixed forests. The aim of this work was to evaluate how tree overstory-layer composition influences on understory-layer diversity in three forest types (monospecific deciduous Nothofagus pumilio (Np), monospecific evergreen Nothofagus betuloides (Nb), and mixed N. pumilio-N. betuloides (M) forests), comparing also between two geographical locations (coast and mountain) to estimate differences at landscape level. Results: We recorded 46 plant species: 4 ferns, 12 monocots, and 30 dicots. Canopy-layer composition influences the herb-layer structure and diversity in two different ways: while mixed forests have greater similarity to evergreen forests in the understory structural features, deciduous and mixed were similar in terms of the specific composition of plant assemblage. Deciduous pure stands were the most diverse, meanwhile evergreen stands were least diverse. Lack of exclusive species of mixed forest could represent a transition where evergreen and deciduous communities meet and integrate. Moreover, landscape has a major influence on the structure, diversity and richness of understory vegetation of pure and mixed forests likely associated to the magnitude and frequency of natural disturbances, where mountain forest not only had highest herb-layer diversity but also more exclusive species. Conclusions: Our study suggests that mixed Nothofagus forest supports coexistence of both pure deciduous and pure evergreen understory plant species and different assemblages in coastal and mountain sites. Maintaining the mixture of canopy patch types within mixed stands will be important for conserving the natural patterns of understory plant composition in southern beech mixed forests.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The influence of canopy-layer composition on understory plant diversity in southern temperate forests

et al. 2017

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“…Sampling of forest structure is described in detail in Burrascano, Sabatini, and Blasi, (), Janssen et al (), Márialigeti, Tinya, Bidló, and Ódor (), Paillet et al, (), Sabatini et al, (), and Sitzia et al, (), and synthesized in Supporting Information Table S3. In short, we sampled living trees in plots ranging from 491 to 2,827 m 2 in area using a diameter at breast height (DBH) threshold of 10 cm.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade‐offs between carbon stocks and biodiversity in European temperate forests

Sabatini

Andrade

Paillet³

et al. 2018

Global Change Biology

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Policies to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss often assume that protecting carbon‐rich forests provides co‐benefits in terms of biodiversity, due to the spatial congruence of carbon stocks and biodiversity at biogeographic scales. However, it remains unclear whether this holds at the scales relevant for management, and particularly large knowledge gaps exist for temperate forests and for taxa other than trees. We built a comprehensive dataset of Central European temperate forest structure and multi‐taxonomic diversity (beetles, birds, bryophytes, fungi, lichens, and plants) across 352 plots. We used Boosted Regression Trees (BRTs) to assess the relationship between above‐ground live carbon stocks and (a) taxon‐specific richness, (b) a unified multidiversity index. We used Threshold Indicator Taxa ANalysis to explore individual species’ responses to changing above‐ground carbon stocks and to detect change‐points in species composition along the carbon‐stock gradient. Our results reveal an overall weak and highly variable relationship between richness and carbon stock at the stand scale, both for individual taxonomic groups and for multidiversity. Similarly, the proportion of win‐win and trade‐off species (i.e., species favored or disadvantaged by increasing carbon stock, respectively) varied substantially across taxa. Win‐win species gradually replaced trade‐off species with increasing carbon, without clear thresholds along the above‐ground carbon gradient, suggesting that community‐level surrogates (e.g., richness) might fail to detect critical changes in biodiversity. Collectively, our analyses highlight that leveraging co‐benefits between carbon and biodiversity in temperate forest may require stand‐scale management that prioritizes either biodiversity or carbon in order to maximize co‐benefits at broader scales. Importantly, this contrasts with tropical forests, where climate and biodiversity objectives can be integrated at the stand scale, thus highlighting the need for context‐specificity when managing for multiple objectives. Accounting for critical change‐points of target taxa can help to deal with this specificity, by defining a safe operating space to manipulate carbon while avoiding biodiversity losses.

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“…Plants in different functional groups (tree, shrub, herb, and treelet) have different environmental requirements when considering the shading effect of canopy [56,57]. These factors not only affect the structure and composition of the ecosystem, both directly and indirectly [58][59][60][61][62][63], but also the pattern of biodiversity over both time and space [64][65][66][67][68]. On a macroscopic scale, the variation in species (genera or families) richness reflects overlapping differences in the distributional range, whereas the edge of distribution limits the capacity of individuals to tolerate and occupy an environment [69].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temperature-Dominated Driving Mechanisms of the Plant Diversity in Temperate Forests, Northeast China

Han

Zhang

et al. 2020

Forests

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Climate, topography, and tree structure have different effects on plant diversity that vary with spatial scale. In this study, we assessed the contribution of these drivers and how they affect the vascular plant richness of different functional groups in a temperate forest ecosystem in Northeast China. We investigated about 0.986 million plants from 3160 sites to quantify the impact of annual mean temperature, sunshine duration, annual precipitation, standard deviation of diameter at breast height, and forest type on richness of vascular plants (total species, tree, treelet, shrub, and herb, separately) using the gradient boosting model. The results show that annual mean temperature had the strongest impact on plant richness. The tree richness peaked at intermediate annual mean temperature and sunshine duration and increased with annual precipitation. The Shannon diversity index and Simpson dominance index increased with annual precipitation and standard deviation of diameter at breast height, decreased with sunshine duration, and peaked at intermediate annual mean temperature and forest type. The total richness and understory richness increased with annual mean temperature and standard deviation of diameter at breast height and peaked at intermediate sunshine duration and annual precipitation. A comprehensive mechanism was found to regulate the plant diversity in forest ecosystems. The relationship between tree richness and annual mean temperature with latitudinal effect could be affected by the differences in number and size of tree individuals, indicating that plant diversity varies with the utilization of energy. The force driving plant richness varied with the functional group due to the different environmental resource requirements and the life history strategies of plants layers.

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Environmental drivers of the composition and diversity of the herb layer in mixed temperate forests in Hungary

Cited by 66 publications

References 73 publications

The influence of canopy-layer composition on understory plant diversity in southern temperate forests

The influence of canopy-layer composition on understory plant diversity in southern temperate forests

Trade‐offs between carbon stocks and biodiversity in European temperate forests

Temperature-Dominated Driving Mechanisms of the Plant Diversity in Temperate Forests, Northeast China

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