Small-scale drivers on plant and ant diversity in a grassland habitat through a multifaceted approach

Michele Mugnai,Filippo Frizzi,Bruno Foggi,Alberto Masoni,Daniele Viciani,Lorenzo Lazzaro,Matteo Dal Cin,Clara Frasconi Wendt,Giacomo Santini,Paride Balzani,Giulio Ferretti

doi:10.7717/peerj.12517

Abstract

Semi-natural grasslands are characterized by high biodiversity and require multifaceted approaches to monitor their biodiversity. Moreover, grasslands comprise a multitude of microhabitats, making the scale of investigation of fundamental importance. Despite their wide distribution, grasslands are highly threatened and are considered of high conservation priority by Directive no. 92/43/EEC. Here, we investigate the effects of small-scale ecological differences between two ecosites present within the EU habitat of Community Interest of semi-natural dry grasslands on calcareous substrates (6210 according to Dir. 92/43/EEC) occurring on a Mediterranean mountain. We measured taxonomic and functional diversity of plant and ant communities, evaluating the differences among the two ecosites, how these differences are influenced by the environment and whether vegetation affects composition of the ant community. Our results show that taxonomic and functional diversity of plant and ant communities are influenced by the environment. While vegetation has no effect on ant communities, we found plant and ant community composition differed across the two ecosites, filtering ant and plant species according to their functional traits, even at a small spatial scale. Our findings imply that small-scale monitoring is needed to effectively conserve priority habitats, especially for those that comprise multiple microhabitats.

Highlights

Semi-natural grasslands are habitats with very high species richness, representing biodiversity hotspots in temperate Europe (Wilson et al, 2012)
Herb coverage and soil depth were higher in Deep ecosite, while microrelief was higher in Rocky ecosite (Fig. 2 and Table 1)
Regarding plant traits, Rocky ecosite results characterized by higher leaf area (LA) and H, while for ant traits we found higher values of Weber’s length (WL), head length (HL), relative leg length (RLL), subordinate behaviour and generalist diet in Deep ecosite

Summary

Introduction

Semi-natural grasslands are habitats with very high species richness, representing biodiversity hotspots in temperate Europe (Wilson et al, 2012). The multitude of microhabitats sustaining a high biodiversity (Habel et al, 2013) justify the high conservation value of these habitats (Dengler et al, 2014). Alongside the richness of plant species, grassland environments are important reservoirs of animal biodiversity (Zulka et al, 2014; Ambarlı et al, 2016), in particular of invertebrate groups (Van Swaay, 2002; Weiss, Zucchi & Hochkirch, 2013; Lacasella et al, 2015). How to cite this article Mugnai M, Frasconi Wendt C, Balzani P, Ferretti G, Dal Cin M, Masoni A, Frizzi F, Santini G, Viciani D, Foggi B, Lazzaro L. Small-scale drivers on plant and ant diversity in a grassland habitat through a multifaceted approach.

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion