Publication details
Native and alien weed species richness and diversity under different regime of disturbances
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2008 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Abstracts and excursion guides |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Botany |
| Keywords | cereal; root crop; rainfall gradient |
| Description | Understanding of processes which promote species richness and diversity of weed vegetation has been one of the major focuses of interest in weed ecology. Changes in weed species richness and beta-diversity are partly attributable to different regime and intensity of disturbances and partly to broad-scale variation in environmental conditions. We compiled a data set of 434 vegetation plots of weed vegetation in root-crop and cereal fields from Moravia (eastern Czech Republic) to compare effects of different disturbance regimes on species richness and beta-diversity between these two arable field habitats. To detect changes in species richness we related the variation in species richness to individual environmental characteristics. To assess differences in beta-diversity between vegetation of cereal and root-crop fields we used Whittakers measure of beta-diversity. All analyses were done for all vascular plant species and separately for native species, archaeophytes, and neophytes. Comparison of weed vegetation of root crops and cereals shows a distinct dichotomy between these two types of weed vegetation. There is no significant difference in total species richness and native species richness; however, cereal fields are richer in archaeophytes and root-crop fields are richer in neophytes. Beta-diversity of weed vegetation is higher in root-crop fields. Environmental factors explain significant part of variability in richness of both natives and aliens. While with increasing precipitation richness of native species increases, beta-diversity of these species decreases. The opposite relationship between richness and ß-diversity was found for archaeophytes, in both cereal and root-crop fields. |
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