Patterns of Plant Diversity and Composition in Wetlands Across a Subtropical Landscape: Comparisons Among Ponds, Streambanks and Riverbanks

Abstract

Understanding how wetland plant communities are organized in different ecosystems and spatial scales is essential to support conservation. Studies that have addressed this primary need, however, are exceptionally scarce. Here, we compared the diversity (alpha, beta and gamma) and composition of herbaceous and woody communities (treated separately and jointly) in ponds, streambanks and riverbanks in the upper Uruguay River Basin, southern Brazil. Results showed that each wetland ecosystem exhibited unique community patterns, depending on the plant group, data property (e.g., presence-absence or abundance), and community parameter. All ecosystem types had exclusive species, beta diversity explained by high rates of species turnover and balanced variation in abundance components, and particular floristic composition, revealing that each wetland type and site contributes fundamentally to the overall wetland plant diversity. These findings indicate that safeguarding wetland plant diversity depends on the adoption of holistic conservation measures.

Which regionalization scheme is the best to predict wetland plant distribution in Western Patagonia?

“…Our results indicated that turnover in species composition primarily accounts for wetland plant total beta-diversity at Patagonian ponds. Previous findings corroborate our results, with the turnover component of beta-diversity being more important than the nestedness component (Boschilia et al, 2016;Soininen et al, 2018;Grasel et al, 2021). Some authors seem to indicate that the nestedness component of beta-diversity is more important in areas affected by glaciations until recent times (Baselga et al, 2012;Dobrovolski et al, 2012).…”