Does landscape context affect pollination-related functional diversity and richness of understory flowers in forest fragments of Atlantic Rainforest in southeastern Brazil?

Karoline Baptista De Lima,Emerson Ricardo Pansarin,Renato Goldenberg,Roxana Cardoso Barreto,Milton Groppo,Danilo Boscolo,Yago Barros-Souza,Guilherme Peres Coelho,Patrícia Alves Ferreira

doi:10.1186/s13717-020-00261-6

Abstract

BackgroundHow landscape modifications affect functional diversity of floral characteristics pertinent to pollinators is poorly known. Flowers possess functional traits that sometimes coevolved with pollinators, crucial for the maintenance of both pollinator and plant communities. We evaluated how richness and functional diversity of available understory flowers respond to forest cover and landscape heterogeneity in a multiscale analysis. Plants in bloom were sampled from 25 landscapes in the understory of Atlantic Forest fragments in Brazil. Species were classified into functional groups regarding flower characteristics relevant to pollination. Landscape heterogeneity and forest cover were measured in buffers ranging from 200 to 2000 m from sampling units and their correlation with plant richness and functional diversity was assessed using generalized linear models and further model selection through Akaike’s second-order information criterion.ResultsPlants’ richness and functional diversity were affected negatively by forest cover. The former responded to forest cover at a regional scale while the latter responded at a local scale. Higher landscape heterogeneity increased richness and functional diversity.ConclusionsOur results showed that forest cover and landscape heterogeneity are important to support biodiversity related to pollination, mostly due to the availability of diversified resources and nesting sites associated to different land-uses for pollinators and flowering plant communities. These findings should highlight, along with forest cover, landscape heterogeneity as an environmental management priority in rural tropical areas for mitigating the loss of plant biodiversity and enhancing ecosystem functioning.

Highlights

How landscape modifications affect functional diversity of floral characteristics pertinent to pollinators is poorly known
We asked the following questions: (i) How does forest cover influence richness and functional diversity of understory plants in bloom? (ii) How does landscape heterogeneity affect the richness and functional diversity of blooming plant communities? (iii) Which landscape scales can better explain these variations? As it was not our objective to do a thorough phytosociological study or plant survey per se, but to evaluate possible landscape effects on understory functional flower diversity coupled to pollination processes, we focused exclusively on plants that were in bloom and receiving visits of potential pollinators
The studied region was mapped by the Spatial Ecology and Conservation Laboratory at the São Paulo State University (LEEC, UNESP - Rio Claro, São Paulo) through manual and supervised classifications using satellite and aerial images with 1 m of resolution

Summary

Introduction

How landscape modifications affect functional diversity of floral characteristics pertinent to pollinators is poorly known. Some studies conducted in agricultural landscapes point to positive effects of environmental heterogeneity over the diversity of many groups of organisms, such as birds, mammals, arthropods, and angiosperms, regardless of the scale (Benton et al 2003; Holzschuh et al 2010; Kennedy et al 2013; Moreira et al 2015; Boscolo et al 2017; Takata 2017; Nery et al 2018) These effects arise mostly due to species different requirements during their life cycle, which can be provided through the availability of different environments that attend to their necessities (Benton et al 2003; Fahrig et al 2011)

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