Abstract
Background and aims – Calcareous grasslands are local biodiversity hotspots in temperate regions that suffered intensive fragmentation. Ecological restoration projects took place all over Europe. Their success has traditionally been assessed using a plant community approach. However, population ecology can also be useful to assess restoration success and to understand underlying mechanisms. Methods – We took advantage of three calcareous grassland sites in Southern Belgium, where reference parcels coexist with parcels restored in the late twentieth century and with more recently restored parcels. We evaluated the colonization stage of three specialist species ( Sanguisorba minor, Potentilla neumanniana and Hippocrepis comosa ) using occurrence data. We also measured the reproductive traits of 120 individuals per species and compared components of fitness between recent restorations, old restorations and reference habitats. Key results – We found that the occurrence of H. comosa was similar in the different restoration classes, whereas both P. neumanniana and S. minor occurrences decreased from reference grasslands to recent restorations. In contrast, these two latter species exhibited a much higher reproductive output in recent restorations, thanks to an increased production of flowers and seeds. Conclusions – Our results suggest that, during colonization of recently restored calcareous grasslands, favourable environmental conditions, low competition and sufficient genetic mixing may lead to an increased fitness of individuals and a faster population growth than in the reference habitat. These results demonstrate how population processes can increase ecological resilience and highlight the interest of a population-based approach to assess the success of ecological restoration.
Highlights
Recent decades have been dominated by unprecedented rates of habitat perturbations by human activities
For P. neumanniana, the occurrence was more important in the reference grasslands and the old restoration than the recent restoration, except in the Montagne-aux-buis site, where the occurrence of P. neumanniana was significantly higher in recent restoration than in other parcels
H. comosa was globally less abundant than the two other species, and no significant differences were observed between reference and restored grasslands except in the Montagne-aux-buis site, where the occurrence of H. comosa was significantly higher in recent restoration than in other parcels
Summary
Recent decades have been dominated by unprecedented rates of habitat perturbations by human activities. As the conservation of remnant habitats is not sufficient to guarantee the longterm survival of many plant species (Rodrigues et al 2004), active habitat restoration has become a necessity to preserve biodiversity worldwide. Calcareous grasslands are local biodiversity hotspots in temperate regions (Prendergast et al.1993; WallisDeVries et al 2002; Jacquemyn et al 2003). These habitats have suffered intensive fragmentation due to the abandonment of traditional agropastoral systems and the resulting encroachment, reforestation, urbanization or transformation into arable lands (Poschlod & WallisDeVries 2002; Piqueray et al 2011a). In order to preserve and enhance the ecological value of those habitats, ecological restoration projects have taken place all over
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