Abstract
Seminatural habitats are declining throughout the world; thus, the role of small anthropogenic habitats in the preservation of plants is becoming increasingly appreciated. Here, we surveyed the orchid flora of roadside verges in five Central European countries (Austria, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia) and tested how the surrounding landscape matrix affects the overall number of species and individuals, and also different functional groups of orchids. We found more than 2,000 individuals of 27 orchid species during our surveys. According to our results, the increasing coverage of agricultural and urban areas negatively affects both the number of orchid species and individuals on roadsides. Our study further suggests that differences in the surrounding habitats affect which species are found on roadsides, since the increasing coverage of grasslands or forested areas around orchid occurrences had a significant positive effect on the number of grassland or forest‐dwelling species and individuals, respectively. Most variance in orchid numerosity and diversity was explained by the cover of the suitable habitat types of the respective taxa in the surrounding landscape of the sampling points. This highlights the importance of roadsides acting as refugia for numerous species and valuable plant communities as well as in supporting biodiversity in general.
Highlights
Seminatural habitats are dominated by native flora, characterized by a typical diversity and species composition, but they bear human-induced alterations
Using the non-thematic sampling protocol, at two sampling points in Austria, we found 23 individuals belonging to four species, including the rare and local G. lithopolitanica
During our extensive field surveys, we found more than 2,000 orchid individuals of 27 different orchid species in roadsides
Summary
Seminatural habitats are dominated by native flora, characterized by a typical diversity and species composition, but they bear human-induced alterations. Seminatural grasslands are often converted into arable lands in response to a higher demand for food production (Hodgson et al, 2005) and afforested for timber production (Mason, 2007), or they are frequently lost to urbanization (Feranec et al, 2010) These alterations to natural and seminatural habitats urge the shift of focus of conservation-oriented research toward anthropogenic habitats that have a potential to provide refuge for native flora elements. Roads impose numerous negative effects on natural ecosystems, including light and sound pollution, introduction of novel mortality risk factors (e.g., collision with vehicles), imposing barriers to dispersal, inducing alterations to the behavior of animals, and their physical and chemical environment, but they contribute to the spread of exotic species (Trombulak & Frissell, 2000) Despite these negative effects, the beneficial role of roadsides as linear landscape elements is increasingly appreciated. The central aims of the current study were to (a) assess species and individual numbers using roadsides as habitats in Central European countries and (b) examine how the landscape matrix affects the species composition, diversity, and abundance of orchids generally and different functional groups of orchids in the sampled habitats
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