Publication details
Landscape effects on diversity of semi-natural grasslands
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | odkaz na článek |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2013.05.022 |
| Field | Botany |
| Keywords | alpha diversity;gamma diversity;habitat diversity;mass effect;multiplicative beta diversity;natural habitat;non-natural habitat;spatially constrained rarefaction;species pool;vascula plants;vegetation-plot database |
| Description | We studied how the landscape structure (percentage cover and diversity of surrounding habitats) affects different components of species diversity (alpha, beta and gamma) of vascular plants in semi-natural grasslands in the Slovak Republic. We analyzed all grasslands combined as well as four main types delimited according to their position along a moisture gradient (xerophilous, sub-xerophilous, mesophilous and wet grasslands). We used grassland records stored in the Slovak Vegetation Database. Along with the total number of species in the vegetation plots, we considered the numbers of target grassland species, forest species, archaeophytes, neophytes and species with high fidelity to non-natural habitats. The landscape parameters based on CORINE land cover maps and the National Grassland Inventory, were calculated for plot neighbourhoods of 4 km2. Spatially constrained rarefaction curves were constructed to examine how different diversity components behave with changing structure of the surrounding landscape. Our study revealed that alpha diversity was affected by both percentage cover and diversity of different habitats in the plot neighbourhood. It increased with increasing proportion or diversity of different natural and semi-natural habitats and decreased with increasing proportion or diversity of non-natural habitats in the surrounding landscape. Beta and gamma diversities showed opposite pattern to that of alpha diversity for most analyzed factors We explain the results by the interplay of two main mechanisms: species pool and spatial mass effects. In our study, the effect of species pool on alpha diversity was stronger than the spatial mass effect. Based on differences indicated in the responses of various grassland types to the surrounding landscape structure, we suggest adoption of community type specific conservation measures |