Assessing poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) presence and functional traits in relation to land cover and biophysical factors

The success of alien plant species can be attributed to differences in functional traits compared to less successful aliens as well as to native species, and thus their adaptation to environmental conditions. Studies have shown that alien (especially invasive) plant species differ from native species in traits such as specific leaf area (SLA), height, seed size or flowering period, where invasive species showed significantly higher values for these traits. Different environmental conditions, though, may promote the success of native or alien species, leading to competitive exclusion due to dissimilarity in traits between the groups. However, native and alien species can also be similar, with environmental conditions selecting for the same set of traits across species. So far, the effect of traits on invasion success has been studied without considering environmental conditions. To understand this interaction we examined the trait–environment relationship within natives, and two groups of alien plant species differing in times of introduction (archaeophytes vs. neophytes). Further, we investigated the difference between non-invasive and invasive neophytes. We analyzed the relationship between functional traits of 1,300 plant species occurring in 1000 randomly selected grid-cells across Germany and across different climatic conditions and land-cover types. Our results show that temperature, precipitation, the proportion of natural habitats, as well as the number of land-cover patches and geological patches affect archaeophytes and neophytes differently, regarding their level of urbanity (in neophytes negative for all non-urban land covers) and self-pollination (mainly positive for archaeophytes). Similar patterns were observed between non-invasive and invasive neophytes, where additionally, SLA, storage organs and the beginning of flowering were strongly related to several environmental factors. Native species did not express any strong relationship between traits and environment, possibly due to a high internal heterogeneity within this group of species. The relationship between trait and environment was more pronounced in neophytes compared to archaeophytes, and most pronounced in invasive plants. The alien species at different stages of the invasion process showed both similarities and differences in terms of the relationship between traits and the environment, showing that the success of introduced species is context-dependent.

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Effects of land cover type on community structure and functional traits of alpine stream benthic macroinvertebrates

Freshwater Biology ◽

10.1111/fwb.13448 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 65 (3) ◽

pp. 524-539 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Alberto Scotti ◽

Leopold Füreder ◽

Thomas Marsoner ◽

Ulrike Tappeiner ◽

Agnieszka E. Stawinoga ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Community Structure ◽

Land Cover ◽

Functional Traits ◽

Benthic Macroinvertebrates ◽

Land Cover Type ◽

Cover Type ◽

Alpine Stream

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Can we predict which species win when new habitat becomes available?

10.1101/562959 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Miki Nomura ◽

Ralf Ohlemüller ◽

William G. Lee ◽

Kelvin M. Lloyd ◽

Barbara J. Anderson

Keyword(s):

Land Cover ◽

Land Cover Change ◽

Functional Traits ◽

Global Environmental Change ◽

Species Traits ◽

Climatic Niche ◽

Open Habitat ◽

Global Environmental ◽

Closed Forest ◽

And Shifts

AbstractLand cover change is a key component of anthropogenic global environmental change, contributing to changes in environmental conditions of habitats. These changes can lead to the redistribution of species and shifts in the functional composition and properties of ecosystems. Deforestation is globally the most widespread anthropogenically driven land cover change leading to conversion from closed forest to open non-forest habitat. The consequences of these functional habitat changes on species distributions are only poorly understood. This study investigates the relative roles of geographic features, species climatic niche characteristics and species traits in determining the ability of open-habitat plant species to take advantage of recently opened habitats. We use current occurrence records of 18 herbaceous, predominantly open-habitat species of the genus Acaena (Rosaceae) to determine their prevalence in recently opened habitat. Geographic features of the spatial distribution of open habitat, species’ climatic niche characteristics, and species traits related to dispersal were tested their correlation with species’ prevalence in anthropogenically opened habitat. While primary open habitat (naturally open) was characterised by cold climates, secondary open habitat (naturally closed but anthropogenically opened) is characterised by warmer and wetter conditions. We found high levels of variation in the prevalence of secondary open habitat among the investigated species indicating differences between species in their ability to colonise newly opened habitat. For the species investigated, geographical and climatic niche factors showed generally stronger relationships with species’ prevalence in secondary open habitat than functional traits did. For small herbaceous species, geographical and environmental factors appear to be more important than species functional traits for facilitating expansion into secondary open habitats. Our results suggested that the land cover change might have triggered the shifts of factors controlling open-habitat plant distributions from the competition with forest trees to current environmental constraints.

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Using avian functional traits to assess the impact of land-cover change on ecosystem processes linked to resilience in tropical forests

Proceedings of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rspb.2016.1289 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 283 (1844) ◽

pp. 20161289 ◽

Cited By ~ 54

Author(s):

Tom P. Bregman ◽

Alexander C. Lees ◽

Hannah E. A. MacGregor ◽

Bianca Darski ◽

Nárgila G. de Moura ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Cover ◽

Seed Dispersal ◽

Land Cover Change ◽

Tropical Forests ◽

Functional Traits ◽

Trophic Interactions ◽

Ecosystem Processes ◽

Secondary Forests ◽

Trait Structure ◽

The Impact

Vertebrates perform key roles in ecosystem processes via trophic interactions with plants and insects, but the response of these interactions to environmental change is difficult to quantify in complex systems, such as tropical forests. Here, we use the functional trait structure of Amazonian forest bird assemblages to explore the impacts of land-cover change on two ecosystem processes: seed dispersal and insect predation. We show that trait structure in assemblages of frugivorous and insectivorous birds remained stable after primary forests were subjected to logging and fire events, but that further intensification of human land use substantially reduced the functional diversity and dispersion of traits, and resulted in communities that occupied a different region of trait space. These effects were only partially reversed in regenerating secondary forests. Our findings suggest that local extinctions caused by the loss and degradation of tropical forest are non-random with respect to functional traits, thus disrupting the network of trophic interactions regulating seed dispersal by forest birds and herbivory by insects, with important implications for the structure and resilience of human-modified tropical forests. Furthermore, our results illustrate how quantitative functional traits for specific guilds can provide a range of metrics for estimating the contribution of biodiversity to ecosystem processes, and the response of such processes to land-cover change.

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