Taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity peaks do not coincide along a compositional gradient in forest‐grassland mosaics

Erdős, László; Ho, Khanh Vu; Bátori, Zoltán; Kröel‐Dulay, György; Ónodi, Gábor; Tölgyesi, Csaba; Török, Péter; Lengyel, Attila

doi:10.1111/1365-2745.14025

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 149 publications

(141 reference statements)

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“…We found obvious differences in strategies among the differently sized forest patches and the forest edges, suggesting that smaller forest patches and forest edges have a limited ability to buffer environmental stress (Erdős et al, 2023), that is, they are harsher than the larger forest patches.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Data necessary to reproduce the analyses are deposited at Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10255319 (Erdős et al., 2023).…”

Section: Data Availability Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, secondary differences emerge among the patches, evoked by the vegetation itself, further stabilizing the pattern of the individual patches. For example, trees and shrubs increase the humus and moisture content of the upper soil and mitigate daily temperature extremes, changes that favor the continuous existence of the forest and hinder the establishment of grassland species (Erdős et al, 2023). As a result, significant environmental differences have been revealed among the various plant communities, which can be arranged along an environmental harshness gradient (Erdős et al, 2018b(Erdős et al, , 2020Ho et al, 2024).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the forest–steppe zone, which is a transitional zone between closed‐canopy forests and steppes (Erdős et al., 2018a), it is assumed that forest and grassland patches, in most cases, represent alternative stable states, that is, they appear under the very same primary environmental conditions and are stable in time (Petraitis, 2013; Erdős et al., 2023). However, secondary differences emerge among the patches, evoked by the vegetation itself, further stabilizing the pattern of the individual patches.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Environmental filtering is the primary driver of community assembly in forest–grassland mosaics: A case study based on CSR strategies

Erdős,

Ho,

Bede‐Fazekas

et al. 2024

J Vegetation Science

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AimsEcological strategies can provide information about plant community assembly and its main drivers. Our aim was to reveal the dominant strategies of the vegetation types of forest–grassland mosaics and to deduce the assembly processes responsible for their species composition.LocationHungary.MethodsWe investigated eight vegetation types of Hungarian forest–steppes. The trade‐off between three key traits related to leaf size and economics was used to calculate Grime's competitive–stress tolerance–ruderal (CSR) value for each species, based on which the mean value for each vegetation type was determined. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) ordination was used to reveal the compositional differences among the vegetation types under study. To analyze how ecological strategies correlate with the compositional gradient, we used linear regression between plot ordination scores (the first DCA scores) and each strategy (C, S, and R). Linear mixed‐effect models were used to evaluate the differences between the vegetation types regarding each strategy (C, S, and R).ResultsEach vegetation type was dominated by the stress‐tolerator strategy, indicating the prominent role of environmental filtering in community assembly. However, ecological strategies differed significantly among the communities. The importance of the stress‐tolerator strategy decreased toward the less harsh end of the gradient (i.e., from grasslands to forests), while the competitor strategy showed a reverse pattern. The ruderal strategy was weakly correlated with the gradient, although its proportion increased toward the harsh end of the gradient.ConclusionsWith ongoing climate change, an increasing importance of environmental filtering is expected in the assembly of the vegetation types in the studied forest–grassland mosaics. We suggest that CSR strategies offer a useful tool for studying plant‐community assembly rules along environmental gradients.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Data necessary to reproduce the analyses are deposited at Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10255319 (Erdős et al., 2023).…”

Section: Data Availability Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Environmental filtering is the primary driver of community assembly in forest–grassland mosaics: A case study based on CSR strategies

Erdős,

Ho,

Bede‐Fazekas

et al. 2024

J Vegetation Science

Self Cite

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“…Both MPD and sesMPD metrics were calculated as a mean value from the 1,000 values for each community (based on the 1,000 trees; Cosset and Edwards, 2017). Then, we used a two-tailed Wilcoxon signed rank test to test the difference between observed and expected MPD (Erdős et al, 2022). We calculated all the metrics using the packages 'FD' (Laliberte & Legendre, 2010), 'adiv' (Pavoine, 2020) and 'picante' (Kembel et al, 2010) in R version 4.1.1 (R Development Core Team, 2021).…”

Section: Taxonomic Functional and Phylogenetic Diversity Metricsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alien bird species decrease the diversity of bird communities across human-disturbed landscapes

Marcolin

Segurado

Chamberlain

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Introduced alien species have direct and indirect effects on native communities, leading to lower taxonomic diversity and negative impacts on ecosystem functioning. Moreover, other aspects of diversity could be negatively affected, through alteration of functional and phylogenetic diversity of a community. This is particularly evident in habitats where human disturbance may favour alien species, posing an additional stressor on native communities. Following the community resistance hypothesis (higher diversity, higher resistance to invasion), we hypothesized: i) higher taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity (TD, FD and PD respectively) in non-invaded bird communities (i.e. no alien bird species); and, ii) lower alien species impact on all diversity metrics in less human-disturbed areas. We surveyed bird communities in a modified Mediterranean landscape subject to varying levels of human disturbance. We tested whether TD, FD and PD indices were significantly different between non-invaded and invaded bird communities, and assessed the effect of landscape composition and configuration on these indices. We found that non-invaded communities retained higher TD and FD than invaded communities. Alien birds occupied novel parts of the functional space in invaded communities, but that they did not fully compensate for the taxonomic and functional diversity loss caused by the absence of native species. These results were consistent across different habitats, suggesting weak environmental filtering of communities. Generally, both communities were negatively affected by more human-disturbed areas (e.g. agriculture and urban areas) and enhanced by forest areas and by landscape heterogeneity. Our results suggest that the occurrence of alien birds negatively affects TD and FD (but not PD) of bird community assemblages, but that this impact is stronger in human-modified landscapes. Therefore, since the conservation of biodiversity in anthropogenic habitats is a worldwide challenge, researchers should prioritize efforts to assess the effects of alien species on communities inhabiting those habitats.

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Structural shifts in plant functional diversity during biogeomorphic succession: Moving beyond taxonomic investigations in an alpine glacier foreland

Haselberger,

Junker,

Ohler

et al. 2024

Earth Surf Processes Landf

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The complex interrelation between plants and geomorphic processes is described in the concept of biogeomorphic succession. While ecological research on succession and community assembly has transitioned towards functional approaches, studies on functional diversity in biogeomorphic settings, particularly in glacier forelands, remain limited. In this study, we investigated abundance of vascular plant species and functional traits in an alpine glacier foreland using data from 199 plots. Our objective was to unravel the development of functional diversity during biogeomorphic succession. Specifically, the study determined whether structural shifts in functional diversity are associated with stability thresholds related to plant cover, geomorphic influence, and examined trait spectra for stages of biogeomorphic succession. Our findings revealed a nonlinear trajectory of functional diversity along the plant cover gradient, marked by two distinct structural shifts at 30% and 74% cover, corresponding to established stability thresholds. Along the gradient of geomorphic influence, we observed an increase in functional diversity until 54% of the plot area was affected, beyond which functional diversity declined below the initial level. The analysis of community‐weighted means of traits across four stages of biogeomorphic succession determined by plant cover and absence and presence of geomorphic influence revealed significant differences in trait values. In the transition to the biogeomorphic stage, associated with the identified initial structural shift, there is a shift from a prevalence of above‐ground adaptation and reproductive traits, such as leaf longevity, structure, growth form and mixed reproductive strategies, to an increased dominance of competitor species and traits related to below‐ground structures, including root type and structures, as well as vegetative reproduction. Our results contribute to understanding the relationship between vegetation succession and geomorphic influence by linking them to plant functional traits. This study advances beyond traditional taxonomic investigations by emphasizing functional approaches to biogeomorphic succession. Moreover, the functional trait data used in this study, easily downloadable from a public repository, can serve as a valuable template for future research in (bio)geomorphology, along with the employed methodologies.

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Taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity peaks do not coincide along a compositional gradient in forest‐grassland mosaics

Abstract: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

Cited by 12 publications

References 149 publications

Environmental filtering is the primary driver of community assembly in forest–grassland mosaics: A case study based on CSR strategies

Environmental filtering is the primary driver of community assembly in forest–grassland mosaics: A case study based on CSR strategies

Alien bird species decrease the diversity of bird communities across human-disturbed landscapes

Structural shifts in plant functional diversity during biogeomorphic succession: Moving beyond taxonomic investigations in an alpine glacier foreland

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