Dataset Information

Resistance of a terrestrial plant community to local microhabitat changes.

ABSTRACT: The number of plant and animal species that exist today is estimated to be around 8.7 million. Approximately 300,000 of these species are flora. This extremely high species diversity has been puzzling scientist since the beginning of ecological research because most of these species compete for limited resources that should lead to the exclusion of all but few superior species. This can be seen in a number of coexistence model today that can only maintain at most four species at a time. We have shown recently that by incorporating minute differences in microhabitat to a lattice competition model, about 13 species can coexist from an initial number of 20. Here, we improve the model further by considering that microhabitat differences are not fixed but can change over time which can affect coexistence. A primary driver to this alteration is climate change, both natural and human induced. To show the resistance of a lattice plant community model, a dynamic microhabitat locality is incorporated by changing the spatial and species-specific heterogeneity of each lattice site. We show that even if the microhabitat locality of each plant species is dynamic, diversity can still be maintained in a lattice plant ecosystem model. This shows that natural communities of terrestrial plants can be resistant to the stress of microhabitat locality changes to a certain extent.

SUBMITTER: Tubay JM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5980338 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Resistance of a terrestrial plant community to local microhabitat changes.

Tubay Jerrold M JM Yoshimura Jin J

Ecology and evolution 20180424 10

The number of plant and animal species that exist today is estimated to be around 8.7 million. Approximately 300,000 of these species are flora. This extremely high species diversity has been puzzling scientist since the beginning of ecological research because most of these species compete for limited resources that should lead to the exclusion of all but few superior species. This can be seen in a number of coexistence model today that can only maintain at most four species at a time. We have ...[more]

PMID: 29876085

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Project description:1. The plant community structure of European lowland forests has changed dramatically in the 20th century, leading to biodiversity decline at various spatial scales. However, due to methodological difficulties associated with simultaneous changes in species diversity and composition, ecological processes behind the changes are still poorly understood. 2. We analysed temporal changes in forest plant community after the mid-20th century abandonment of coppicing in a typical Central European forest, which had been managed as coppice for centuries. We used 122 semi-permanent plots first surveyed in the 1950s shortly after the last coppicing and again in the 2000s after half a century of natural succession. We used a novel Temporal Nestedness Analysis to disentangle the immigration and extinction processes underlying temporal changes in community structure and tested whether species gains and losses were ecologically random. 3. The studied vegetation has shifted from the species-rich assemblages of a relatively open and low-nutrient forest towards the impoverished flora of a closed-canopy forest dominated by a few shade-adapted species. The significant reduction of beta diversity, i.e. compositional heterogeneity among plots, indicated taxonomic homogenization of the forest understorey. Temporal species turnover was only a minor component of the community change and recent assemblages are nested subsets of the former ones. Ecologically non-random extinctions dominated these changes. Light-demanding species with a persistent seed-bank were the most prone to extinction, while species with high specific leaf area substantially increased in frequency. 4. Synthesis and applications. The dominant process after the abandonment of coppicing was the ecologically non-random extinction of light-demanding species leading to an impoverished, temporally nested plant community structure. This development is typical for many abandoned lowland coppice forests and poses a significant threat to forest biodiversity in Europe. If forestry and conservation policies continue to prefer closed-canopy stands, many endangered species are likely to pay their extinction debts. To restore declining or even locally extinct species, canopy opening in abandoned coppices is urgently needed.

Dataset Information

Resistance of a terrestrial plant community to local microhabitat changes.

Publications

Resistance of a terrestrial plant community to local microhabitat changes.

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