Intraspecific phenotypic variability of plant functional traits in contrasting mountain grasslands habitats

Empirical studies that link plants intraspecific variation to environmental conditions are almost lacking, despite their relevance in understanding mechanisms of plant adaptation, in predicting the outcome of environmental change and in conservation. Here, we investigate intraspecific trait variation of four grassland species along with abiotic environmental variation at high spatial resolution (n = 30 samples per species trait and environmental factor per site) in two contrasting grassland habitats in Central Apennines (Italy). We test for phenotypic adaptation between habitats, intraspecific trait-environment relationships within habitats, and the extent of trait and environmental variation. We considered whole plant, clonal, leaf, and seed traits. Differences between habitats were tested using ANOVA and ANCOVA. Trait-environment relationships were assessed using multiple regression models and hierarchical variance partitioning. The extent of variation was calculated using the coefficient of variation. Significant intraspecific differences in trait attributes between the contrasting habitats indicate phenotypic adaptation to in situ environmental conditions. Within habitats, light, soil temperature, and the availability of nitrate, ammonium, magnesium and potassium were the most important factors driving intraspecific trait-environment relationships. Leaf traits and height growth show lower variability than environment being probably more regulated by plants than clonal traits which show much higher variability. We show the adaptive significance of key plant traits leading to intraspecific adaptation of strategies providing insights for conservation of extant grassland communities. We argue that protecting habitats with considerable medium- and small-scale environmental heterogeneity is important to maintain large intraspecific variability within local populations that finally can buffer against uncertainty of future climate and land use scenarios.     

Contrasting patterns in leaf traits of Mediterranean shrub communities along an elevation gradient: measurements matter

Plant Ecology - We assessed the changes in community-weighted mean (CWM) and variability of specific leaf area (SLA) and leaf area (LA) of different Mediterranean shrub communities along an...     

Unravelling mechanisms of short-term vegetation dynamics in complex coppice forest systems

The silvicultural management of coppicing has been very common in deciduous forests in many European countries. After decades of decline of this practice, socio-economic changes might induce a revival valuing the biomass as a resource. New insights in the ecological processes that regulate plant diversity are relevant for a sustainable forest management. While studies on long-term changes are available, the short-term dynamics of the coppice forest understorey has not yet been explored. In this context, it is interesting to evaluate the species compositional changes, including the processes of species turnover and species impoverishment (nestedness) and to investigate the role of plant functional traits. For this purpose, we resampled a chronosequence of complex coppice beech forests of the Central Apennines (Italy) monitoring the short-time species dynamics of five years (i.e. from 2006 to 2011) in three age classes, i.e. post-logged, recovering and old coppice stands (0–16, 17–31 and > 32 years, respectively). In contrast to our expectation, declining species richness appeared only in the recovering stands, while the landscape scale (between-stand) heterogeneity, except for post-logged and recovering stands in 2011, did not change over five years. Significant temporal nestedness was found in each stage of succession. However, the rate of species turnover and species impoverishment do not significantly differ among the three age classes, indicating their constant importance along the forest regeneration after disturbance. Only in the early stage of forest regeneration after coppicing, species compositional changes are reflected by functional changes with surviving understorey species having clonal regeneration traits. Our results suggest an overall landscape-scale stability (and sustainability) of this coppice forest system. We conclude with management indications, highlighting the importance of maintaining the traditional local approach (coppicing with standards in small 0.5–1.0 ha sized management units with a ca 30-year rotation cycle) where active coppice parcels are interspersed by abandoned stands.