Plant community assembly in Mediterranean grasslands: understanding the interplay between grazing and spatio-temporal water availability

Journal of Vegetation Science

Volumn 28, Issue 1, 2017, Pages 149-159

  Rota, Cristina ^a   Manzano, Pablo ^a   Carmona, Carlos P ^b   Malo, Juan E ^a   Peco, Begoña ^a  

^a UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE MADRID   (Spain)

^b UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH BOHEMIA   (Czech Republic)

Author keywords

Annual plants; Diversity partitioning; Environmental filtering; Functional diversity; Functional redundancy; Functional structure; Plant functional traits; Productivity; Species richness; Stocking density

Indexed keywords

ANNUAL PLANT; ASSEMBLY RULE; ECOSYSTEM FUNCTION; GRASSLAND; GRAZING PRESSURE; MEDITERRANEAN ENVIRONMENT; NICHE PARTITIONING; PLANT COMMUNITY; PRIMARY PRODUCTION; SPATIOTEMPORAL ANALYSIS; SPECIES DIVERSITY; SPECIES RICHNESS; STOCKING DENSITY; TEMPORAL VARIATION; WATER AVAILABILITY;

MEDITERRANEAN COAST [SPAIN]; SPAIN;

EID: 84991670894     PISSN: 11009233     EISSN: 16541103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/jvs.12470     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. Arellano, G. & Peco, B. 2012. Testing the role of seed size in annual legume seedling performance under experimental autumn moisture conditions. Journal of Vegetation Science 23: 690–697.
2. Azcárate, F.M., Sánchez, A.M., Arqueros, L. & Peco, B. 2002. Abundance and habitat segregation in Mediterranean grassland species: the importance of seed weight. Journal of Vegetation Science 13: 159–166.
3. Cantarel, A.A.M., Bloor, J.M.G. & Soussana, J.F. 2013. Four years of simulated climate change reduces above-ground productivity and alters functional diversity in a grassland ecosystem. Journal of Vegetation Science 24: 113–126.
4. Carmona, C.P., Azcárate, F.M., de Bello, F., Ollero, H.S., Lepš, J. & Peco, B. 2012. Taxonomical and functional diversity turnover in Mediterranean grasslands: interactions between grazing, habitat type and rainfall. Journal of Applied Ecology 49: 1084–1093.
5. Carmona, C.P., Mason, N.W.H., Azcárate, F.M. & Peco, B. 2015a. Inter-annual fluctuations in rainfall shift the functional structure of Mediterranean grasslands across gradients of productivity and disturbance. Journal of Vegetation Science 26: 538–551.
6. Carmona, C.P., Rota, C., Azcárate, F.M. & Peco, B. 2015b. More for less: sampling strategies of plant functional traits across local environmental gradients. Functional Ecology 29: 579–588.
7. Carmona, C.P., De Bello, F., Mason, N.W.H. & Leps, J. 2016. Traits without borders: integrating functional diversity across scales. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 31: 382–394.
8. Cingolani, A.M., Posse, G. & Collantes, M.B. 2005. Plant functional traits, herbivore selectivity and response to sheep grazing in Patagonian steppe grasslands. Journal of Applied Ecology 42: 50–59.
9. Cornelissen, J.H.C., Lavorel, S., Garnier, E., Díaz, S., Buchmann, N., Gurvich, D.E., Reich, P.B., Ter Steege, H., Morgan, H.D., (…) & Poorter, H. 2003. A handbook of protocols for standardised and easy measurement of plant functional traits worldwide. Australian Journal of Botany 51: 335–380.
10. de Bello, F., Lepš, J. & Sebastià, M.T. 2006. Variations in species and functional plant diversity along climatic and grazing gradients. Ecography 29: 801–810.
11. de Bello, F., Thuiller, W., Leps, J., Choler, P., Clement, J.C., Macek, P., Sebastia, M.T. & Lavorel, S. 2009. Partitioning of functional diversity reveals the scale and extent of trait convergence and divergence. Journal of Vegetation Science 20: 475–486.
12. de Bello, F., Lavergne, S., Meynard, C.N., Lepš, J. & Thuiller, W. 2010. The partitioning of diversity: showing Theseus a way out of the labyrinth. Journal of Vegetation Science 21: 992–1000.
13. Díaz, S., Cabido, M. & Casanoves, F. 1998. Plant functional traits and environmental filters at a regional scale. Journal of Vegetation Science 9: 113–122.
14. Díaz, S., Lavorel, S., McIntyre, S., Falczuk, V., Casanoves, F., Milchunas, D.G., Skarpe, C., Rusch, G., Sternberg, M., (…) & Campbell, B.D. 2007. Plant trait responses to grazing – A global synthesis. Global Change Biology 13: 313–341.
15. Dorrough, J., Moxham, C., Turner, V. & Sutter, G. 2006. Soil phosphorus and tree cover modify the effects of livestock grazing on plant species richness in Australian grassy woodland. Biological Conservation 130: 394–405.
16. Espigares, T. & Peco, B. 1995. Mediterranean annual pasture dynamics: impact of autumn drought. Journal of Ecology 83: 135–142.
17. Fox, J. & Weisberg, S. 2011. An R Companion to Applied Regression, 2nd ed. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, US.
18. Fukami, T., Martijn Bezemer, T., Mortimer, S.R. & Putten, W.H. 2005. Species divergence and trait convergence in experimental plant community assembly. Ecology Letters 8: 1283–1290.
19. Gower, J.C. 1971. A general coefficient of similarity and some of its properties. Biometrics 27: 857–874.
20. Grime, J.P. 2001. Plant Strategies, Vegetation Processes, and Ecosystem Properties. John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, UK.
21. Grime, J.P. 2006. Trait convergence and trait divergence in herbaceous plant communities: mechanisms and consequences. Journal of Vegetation Science 17: 255–260.
22. Grubb, P.J. 1977. The maintenance of species-richness in plant communities: the importance of the regeneration niche. Biological Reviews 52: 107–145.
23. Jost, L. 2007. Partitioning diversity into independent alpha and beta components. Ecology 88: 2427–2439.
24. 13C), and WUE plasticity to drought in Arabidopsis thaliana. Ecology and Evolution 4: 4505–4521.
25. Kikvidze, Z., Suzuki, M. & Brooker, R. 2011. Importance versus intensity of ecological effects: why context matters. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 26: 383–388.
26. Laliberté, E., Norton, D.A. & Scott, D. 2013. Contrasting effects of productivity and disturbance on plant functional diversity at local and metacommunity scales. Journal of Vegetation Science 24: 834–842.
27. Lavorel, S., de Bello, F., Grigulis, K., Lepš, J., Garnier, E., Castro, H., Dolezal, J., Godolets, C., Quétier, F. & Thébault, A. 2011. Response of herbaceous vegetation functional diversity to land use change across five sites in Europe and Israel. Israel Journal of Ecology & Evolution 57: 53–72.
28. Lepš, J., de Bello, F., Šmilauer, P. & Doležal, J. 2011. Community trait response to environment: disentangling species turnover vs intraspecific trait variability effects. Ecography 34: 856–863.
29. Mantel, N. 1967. The detection of disease clustering and a generalized regression approach. Cancer Research 27: 209–220.
30. Mason, N.W.H., de Bello, F., Doležal, J. & Lepš, J. 2011. Niche overlap reveals the effects of competition, disturbance and contrasting assembly processes in experimental grassland communities. Journal of Ecology 99: 788–796.
31. Mason, N.W.H., Richardson, S.J., Peltzer, D.A., de Bello, F., Wardle, D.A. & Allen, R.B. 2012. Changes in coexistence mechanisms along a long-term soil chronosequence revealed by functional trait diversity. Journal of Ecology 100: 678–689.
32. Mayfield, M.M., Bonser, S.P., Morgan, J.W., Aubin, I., McNamara, S. & Vesk, P.A. 2010. What does species richness tell us about functional trait diversity? Predictions and evidence for responses of species and functional trait diversity to land-use change. Global Ecology and Biogeography 19: 423–431.
33. McCune, B. & Keon, D. 2002. Equations for potential annual direct incident radiation and heat load. Journal of Vegetation Science 13: 603–606.
34. McGill, B.J., Enquist, B.J., Weiher, E. & Westoby, M. 2006. Rebuilding community ecology from functional traits. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 21: 178–185.
35. Metz, J., Liancourt, P., Kigel, J., Harel, D., Sternberg, M. & Tielbörger, K. 2010. Plant survival in relation to seed size along environmental gradients: a long-term study from semi-arid and Mediterranean annual plant communities. Journal of Ecology 98: 697–704.
36. Milchunas, D.G., Sala, O.E. & Lauenroth, W.K. 1988. A generalized model of the effects of grazing by large herbivores on grassland community structure. The American Naturalist 132: 87–106.
37. Mouillot, D., Graham, N.A.J., Villéger, S., Mason, N.W.H. & Bellwood, D.R. 2013. A functional approach reveals community responses to disturbances. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 28: 167–177.
38. Oesterheld, M. & Semmartin, M. 2011. Impact of grazing on species composition: adding complexity to a generalized model. Austral Ecology 36: 881–890.
39. Osem, Y., Perevolotsky, A. & Kigel, J. 2002. Grazing effect on diversity of annual plant communities in a semi-arid rangeland: interactions with small scale spatial and temporal variation in primary productivity. Journal of Ecology 90: 936–946.
40. Osem, Y., Perevolotsky, A. & Kigel, J. 2004. Site productivity and plant size explain the response of annual species to grazing exclusion in a Mediterranean semi-arid rangeland. Journal of Ecology 92: 297–309.
41. Pakeman, R.J. 2004. Consistency of plant species and trait responses to grazing along a productivity gradient: a multi-site analysis. Journal of Ecology 92: 893–905.
42. Peco, B., De Pablos, I., Traba, J. & Levassor, C. 2005. The effect of grazing abandonment on species composition and functional traits: the case of dehesa grasslands. Basic and Applied Ecology 6: 175–183.
43. Peco, B., Rico, L. & Azcárate, F.M. 2009. Seed size and response to rainfall patterns in annual grasslands: 16 years of permanent plot data. Journal of Vegetation Science 20: 8–16.
44. Peco, B., Carmona, C.P., de Pablos, I. & Azcárate, F.M. 2012. Effects of grazing abandonment on functional and taxonomic diversity of Mediterranean grasslands. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 152: 27–32.
45. Quiroga, R.E., Golluscio, R.A., Blanco, L.J. & Fernández, R.J. 2010. Aridity and grazing as convergent selective forces: an experiment with an Arid Chaco bunchgrass. Ecological Applications 20: 1876–1889.
46. Rao, C.R. 1982. Diversity and dissimilarity coefficients: a unified approach. Theoretical Population Biology 21: 24–43.
47. Ricotta, C. & Moretti, M. 2011. CWM and Rao's quadratic diversity: a unified framework for functional ecology. Oecologia 167: 181–188.
48. Roscher, C., Schumacher, J., Lipowsky, A., Gubsch, M., Weigelt, A., Pompe, S., Kolle, O., Buchmann, N., Schmid, B. & Schulze, E.D. 2013. A functional trait-based approach to understand community assembly and diversity–productivity relationships over 7 years in experimental grasslands. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 15: 139–149.
49. Rosenfeld, J.S. 2002. Functional redundancy in ecology and conservation. Oikos 98: 156–162.
50. Sanchez, A.M., Azcarate, F.M., Arqueros, L. & Peco, B. 2002. Volumen y dimensiones como predictores del peso de semilla de especies herbáceas del centro de la Península Ibérica. Anales Jardín Botánico de Madrid 59: 249–262.
51. Sasaki, T., Okubo, S., Okayasu, T., Jamsran, U., Ohkuro, T. & Takeuchi, K. 2009. Two-phase functional redundancy in plant communities along a grazing gradient in Mongolian rangelands. Ecology 90: 2598–2608.
52. Schielzeth, H. 2010. Simple means to improve the interpretability of regression coefficients. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 1: 103–113.
53. Sternberg, M., Gutman, M., Perevolotsky, A., Ungar, E.D. & Kigel, J. 2000. Vegetation response to grazing management in a Mediterranean herbaceous community: a functional group approach. Journal of Applied Ecology 37: 224–237.
54. Tutin, T.G., Heywood, V.H., Burges, N.A., Valentine, D.H., Walters, S.M. & Webb, D.A. 1964–1980. Flora Europaea. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
55. Vandewalle, M., Purschke, O., de Bello, F., Reitalu, T., Prentice, H.C., Lavorel, S., Johansson, L.J. & Sykes, M.T. 2014. Functional responses of plant communities to management, landscape and historical factors in semi-natural grasslands. Journal of Vegetation Science 25: 750–759.
56. Whittaker, R.J. 1975. Communities and ecosystems. Macmillan, New York, NY, US.
57. Wolock, D.M. & McCabe, G.J. 1995. Comparison of single and multiple flow direction algorithms for computing topographic parameters in TOPMODEL. Water Resources Research 31: 1315–1324.