Dataset Information

Predicting the establishment success of introduced target species in grassland restoration by functional traits.

ABSTRACT: Species-rich semi-natural grasslands are highly endangered habitats in Central Europe and numerous restoration efforts have been made to compensate for the losses in the last decades. However, some plant species could become more easily established than others. The establishment success of 37 species was analyzed over 6 years at two study sites of a restoration project in Germany where hay transfer and sowing of threshing material in combination with additional sowing were applied. The effects of the restoration method applied, time since the restoration took place, traits related to germination, dispersal, and reproduction, and combinations of these traits on the establishment were analyzed. While the specific restoration method of how seeds were transferred played a subordinate role, the establishment success depended in particular on traits such as flower season or the lifeform. Species flowering in autumn, such as Pastinaca sativa and Serratula tinctoria, became established better than species flowering in other seasons, probably because they could complete their life cycle, resulting in increasingly stronger seed pressure with time. Geophytes, like Allium angulosum and Galium boreale, became established very poorly, but showed an increase with study duration. For various traits, we found significant trait by method and trait by year interactions, indicating that different traits promoted establishment under different conditions. Using a multi-model approach, we tested whether traits acted in combination. For the first years and the last year, we found that models with three traits explained establishment success better than models with a single trait or two traits. While traits had only an additive effect on the establishment success in the first years, trait interactions became important thereafter. The most important trait was the season of flowering, which occurred in all best models from the third year onwards. Overall, our approach revealed the potential of functional trait analysis to predict success in restoration projects.

SUBMITTER: Engst K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5606862 | biostudies-other | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Predicting the establishment success of introduced target species in grassland restoration by functional traits.

Engst Karina K Baasch Annett A Bruelheide Helge H

Ecology and evolution 20170811 18

Species-rich semi-natural grasslands are highly endangered habitats in Central Europe and numerous restoration efforts have been made to compensate for the losses in the last decades. However, some plant species could become more easily established than others. The establishment success of 37 species was analyzed over 6 years at two study sites of a restoration project in Germany where hay transfer and sowing of threshing material in combination with additional sowing were applied. The effects o ...[more]

PMID: 28944029

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Project description:Species establishment within a community depends on their interactions with the local environment and resident community. Such environmental and biotic filtering is frequently inferred from functional trait and phylogenetic patterns within communities; these patterns may also predict which additional species can establish. However, differentiating between environmental and biotic filtering can be challenging, which may complicate establishment predictions. Creating a habitat-specific species pool by identifying which absent species within the region can establish in the focal habitat allows us to isolate biotic filtering by modeling dissimilarity between the observed and biotically excluded species able to pass environmental filters. Similarly, modeling the dissimilarity between the habitat-specific species pool and the environmentally excluded species within the region can isolate local environmental filters. Combined, these models identify potentially successful phenotypes and why certain phenotypes were unsuccessful. Here, we present a framework that uses the functional dissimilarity among these groups in logistic models to predict establishment of additional species. This approach can use multivariate trait distances and phylogenetic information, but is most powerful when using individual traits and their interactions. It also requires an appropriate distance-based dissimilarity measure, yet the two most commonly used indices, nearest neighbor (one species) and mean pairwise (all species) distances, may inaccurately predict establishment. By iteratively increasing the number of species used to measure dissimilarity, a functional neighborhood can be chosen that maximizes the detection of underlying trait patterns. We tested this framework using two seed addition experiments in calcareous grasslands. Although the functional neighborhood size that best fits the community's trait structure depended on the type of filtering considered, selecting these functional neighborhood sizes allowed our framework to predict up to 50% of the variation in actual establishment from seed. These results indicate that the proposed framework may be a powerful tool for studying and predicting species establishment.

Project description:Plant functional traits serve as a bridge between plants, the environment, and ecosystem function, playing an important role in predicting the changes in ecosystem function that occur during ecological restoration. However, the response of grassland ecosystem function to plant functional traits in the context of ecological restoration in areas of karst desertification remains unclear. Therefore, in this study, we selected five plant functional traits [namely, plant height (H), specific leaf area (SLA), leaf dry matter content (LDMC), root length (RL), and root dry matter content (RDMC)], measured these along with community-weighted mean (CWM) and functional trait diversity, and combined these measures with 10 indexes related to ecosystem function in order to investigate the differences in plant functional traits and ecosystem function, as well as the relationship between plant functional traits and ecosystem functions, under four ecological restoration models [Dactylis glomerata (DG), Lolium perenne (LP), Lolium perenne + Trifolium repens (LT), and natural grassland (NG)]. We found that: 1) the Margalef index and Shannon-Wiener index were significantly lower for plant species in DG and LP than for those in NG (P<0.05), while the Simpson index was significantly higher in the former than in NG (P<0.05); 2) CWMH, CWMLDMC, and CWMRDMC were significantly higher in DG, LP, and LT than in NG, while CWMSLA was significantly lower in the former than in NG (P<0.05). The functional richness index (FRic) was significantly higher in DG and LP than in NG and LT, but the functional dispersion index (FDis) and Rao's quadratic entropy index (RaoQ) were significantly lower in DG and LP than in NG and LT (P<0.05), and there was no significant difference between DG and LP, or between NG and LT (P>0.05); 3) ecosystem function, including ecosystem productivity, carbon storage, water conservation and soil conservation, was highest in LT and lowest in NG; and 4) CWMLDMC (F=56.7, P=0.024), CWMRL (F=28.7, P=0.024), and CWMH (F=4.5, P=0.048) were the main factors affecting ecosystem function. The results showed that the mixed pasture of perennial ryegrass and white clover was most conductive to restoration of ecosystem function. This discovery has important implications for the establishment of vegetation, optimal utilization of resources, and the sustainable development of degraded karst ecosystems.

Dataset Information

Predicting the establishment success of introduced target species in grassland restoration by functional traits.

Publications

Predicting the establishment success of introduced target species in grassland restoration by functional traits.

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