Abstract
In agricultural landscapes, semi-natural habitats are scarce and remaining habitat patches are largely isolated. However, linear landscape elements might facilitate dispersal of plant species through the agricultural landscape matrix. We investigated the following research questions: 1. are open linear landscape elements (LLE) effective corridors for dispersal of vascular plant species? 2. Which plant species, with respect to phytosociological group and dispersal-distance class, do use LLE as corridors? 3. To which extent is floristic similarity of communities influenced by dispersal through corridors? Field work was carried out in agricultural landscapes of Northwest Germany. We sampled 50 vegetation relevés on open linear landscape elements i.e. field margins (incl. road verges) and ditches, in eight 1-km2 study areas. Then, we calculated Jaccard similarities of all plot pairs within study areas using either all species or only species of certain phytosociological groups or dispersal-distance classes. We assessed the isolation of the plots from each other using both Euclidean distance and resistance distance along LLE. Resistance distance reflected the degree of connectivity of the LLE network between the plots. A stronger effect on Jaccard similarity of resistance distance compared to Euclidean distance would indicate corridor dispersal of plants through LLE. Relationships between Jaccard similarity and the two isolation measures were analysed with Generalised Linear Mixed Models. Resistance distance of LLE had a stronger negative effect on Jaccard similarity than Euclidean distance in field margins, but not in ditches. This was found for species of ‘meadows and pastures’ and short to medium dispersal distance. In plot pairs that were highly connected by LLE, the models suggested that roughly 20% of all species occurred in both plots due to dispersal through LLE. Other species groups did not respond more strongly to resistance distance than to Euclidean distance. We conclude that linear landscape elements in agricultural landscapes are effective corridors for dispersal of plant species that are confined to semi-natural habitats, such as traditional grasslands, and lack mechanisms of long-distance dispersal.
Highlights
Intensification of land use has caused tremendous loss of semi-natural habitats, such as unimproved grasslands or wetlands
We modelled the effects of Euclidean distance and resistance distance on Jaccard similarity of releveplots with Generalised Linear Mixed Models (GLMM) using the function glmer of the lme4 package [38] in R version 3.3.1 [39]
Significant effects of isolation measures–either Euclidean distance or resistance distance or both–on Jaccard similarity were found for all species groups, except for species with aquatic dispersal where resistance distance, was close to significance level (p = 0.063; Table 1; detailed model output is given in S5 Table)
Summary
Intensification of land use has caused tremendous loss of semi-natural habitats, such as unimproved grasslands or wetlands. Linear landscape elements (LLE), such as field margins, ditches and hedges, may function as refuge habitats for species of traditional grasslands, wetlands and other semi-natural habitats [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18]. They might serve as habitat corridors for such species and, provide connectivity between core habitat patches
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