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Abstract
In intensively used landscapes biodiversity is often restricted to fragmented habitats. Exploring the biodiversity potential of habitat fragments is essential in order to reveal their complementary role in maintaining landscape-scale biodiversity. We investigated the conservation potential of dry grassland fragments in the Great Hungarian Plain, i.e. patch-like habitats on ancient burial mounds and linear-shaped habitats in verges, and compared them to continuous grasslands. We focused on plant taxonomic diversity, species richness of specialists, generalists and weeds, and the phylogenetic diversity conserved in the habitats. Verges meshing the landscape are characterised by a small core area and high level of disturbance. Their species pool was more similar to grasslands than mounds due to the lack of dispersal limitations. They held high species richness of weeds and generalists and only few specialists. Verges preserved only a small proportion of the evolutionary history of specialists, which were evenly distributed between the clades. Isolated mounds are characterised by a small area, a high level of environmental heterogeneity, and a low level of disturbance. Steep slopes of species accumulation curves suggest that high environmental heterogeneity likely contributes to the high species richness of specialists on mounds. Mounds preserved the same amount of phylogenetic diversity represented by the branch-lengths as grasslands. Abundance-weighted evolutionary distinctiveness of specialists was more clustered in these habitats due to the special habitat conditions. For the protection of specialists in transformed landscapes it is essential to focus efforts on preserving both patch-like and linear grassland fragments containing additional components of biodiversity.
Highlights
Dry grasslands are amongst the most endangered habitats of Europe, due to the large-scale habitat loss and landscape-level fragmentation of grassland habitats (Fletcher et al 2018)
In total we recorded 229 vascular plant species in the study sites: 135 species occurred in the continuous grasslands, 145 on the kurgans and 136 in the verges
We found that the community PD (cPD) values were lower for verges than for continuous grasslands
Summary
Dry grasslands are amongst the most endangered habitats of Europe, due to the large-scale habitat loss and landscape-level fragmentation of grassland habitats (Fletcher et al 2018). In intensively managed landscapes elements of grassland biodiversity have often been able to survive in small fragments that were not suitable for agriculture or for infrastructural developments (Bhagwat and Rutte 2006; Deak et al 2020; Loki et al 2019; Molnar et al 2017). These fragments often harbour populations of grassland specialist plants, act as an integral element of the semi-natural habitat network, and have a considerable role in maintaining landscape-scale diversity. Due to their small size, the management of these habitats is often not optimal from a conservation point view; they are often abandoned or used in an over-intensified way
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