Functional strategies and distribution of climbing plant communities in different vegetation patches in a subtropical dry forest,central Argentina

AimsIn the context of global change, the impacts of forest structure alteration on climbing plants in extra-tropical ecosystems are poorly understood. It also remains little explored, the functional strategies among climbing plant species and its relationship with the local-scale distribution of climbing plant communities. Here, we aimed at three goals: (i) we studied how climbing plant community composition responds to the modification of the original forest structure in a subtropical dry forest; (ii) we characterized climbing plant species according to functional traits related to the acquisition and use of resources; and (iii) we examined whether functional strategies at the community level are also responding to vegetation structure change, a much less addressed topic in the ecology of climbing plants.