Paddy fields located in water storage zones could take over the wetland plant community

Takeshi Osawa,Takashi Oka,Takaaki Nishida

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-71958-z

Abstract

Land use change could affect not only local species richness but also community assemblies. Essentially, the possible patterns of plant community assemblies are nonrandom species loss (nestedness) and species turnover. Plant community assemblies in human-mediated land use have a combination of both nestedness and turnover. This is because of historical effects that cause nonrandom species loss due to previous and/or original habitat quality and because of direct effects of human activities that cause species turnover. We investigated the complexity of the process of plant community assemblage in a paddy field, which is a typical agricultural land use in the monsoon season in central Japan. Using multi-temporal plant monitoring records, we tested the relationship between the ratio of species nestedness/turnover through multi-temporal and both the original habitat conditions and the extent of human modification. The findings revealed that paddy fields that originated from wetland habitat had a high nestedness ratio, whereas paddy fields that were largely consolidated had a high turnover ratio. Thus, we could divide the community assembly processes in human-mediated land use based on original habitat conditions and human activities. This concept could help land managers establish conservation and/or restoration plans that take into account community assembly.

Highlights

Land use change could affect local species richness and community assemblies
Habitat degradation caused by land use could cause community and metacommunity structures to collapse by inhibiting the ecological processes of assemblies[2,7]
Human land use change could alter the components of plant communities dramatically and inhibit their recovery[4], plant communities can occasionally retain their components following habitat degradation, for example, through either fragmentation or reduction in a rea[16]

Summary

Introduction

Land use change could affect local species richness and community assemblies. The possible patterns of plant community assemblies are nonrandom species loss (nestedness) and species turnover. Plant community assemblies in human-mediated land use have a combination of both nestedness and turnover. This is because of historical effects that cause nonrandom species loss due to previous and/or original habitat quality and because of direct effects of human activities that cause species turnover. We could divide the community assembly processes in human-mediated land use based on original habitat conditions and human activities. There is a complex combination of nonrandom species loss and turnover for community assemblies within human-mediated land use

Methods

Results

Conclusion