Species representativeness of Fabaceae in restrictive soils explains the difference in structure of two types of Chaco vegetation

Marcelo Leandro Bueno,José Carlos Casagrande,Mozart Sávio Pires Baptista,Vivian Almeida Assunção,Ângela Lúcia Bagnatori Sartori

doi:10.1590/0102-33062020abb0064

Abstract

The distributions of species of Fabaceae are strongly related to the soil. Their presence can alter restrictive conditions and favour the establishment of other species. However, it is still not known how the relationship between species of Fabaceae and edaphic factors interact in structuring woody Chaco vegetation. In this context, we aimed to test the hypothesis that restrictive edaphic conditions can explain the difference in floristic patterns of two types of vegetation through their species representativeness of Fabaceae. We analysed floristic consistency between wooded and forested Chaco to address how spatial and environment components might explain differences between them along with the effects of the interaction between Fabaceae and the soil. We observed that the association between environmental and spatial variables was more important than any individual factor in explaining the structuring of the communities. Both the percentage of species of Fabaceae present and the soil influence the structure of the two types of vegetation. Species of Fabaceae have greater potential as indicators in the wooded Chaco. Therefore, we suggest the interaction between soil types and species of Fabaceae plays a role during the structuring of the communities through the establishment of these species in more restrictive soils.

Highlights

The processes that determine species distribution are central to understand communities (Benkman 2013; McPeek 2017)
The analyses included the measurements of pH, potential acidity (H + Al), cation exchange capacity (CEC) and sum of bases (SB), organic matter content (OM), base saturation (V %), macro– (Mg, Na, K, and P) and micronutrient (Al, Mn, Fe, Cu, Zn, S, B) contents
We investigated the relationships between species distribution and environmental variables through redundancy analysis (RDA) (Dray et al 2012; Legendre & Legendre 2012)

Summary

Introduction

The processes that determine species distribution are central to understand communities (Benkman 2013; McPeek 2017). The niche theory predicts that communities are structured by deterministic processes (e.g. competition and environmental filtering), while the neutral theory, by stochastic processes (e.g. dispersion limitation). The consensus has been reached that these mechanisms work together, and the distribution patterns can be explained by environmental factors (John et al 2007; Brunbjerg et al 2012; Neves et al 2017), by spatial stochastic mechanisms (Cottenie 2005; Wang et al 2008) or by the interaction between them (Legendre et al 2009; Neves et al 2015; Bueno et al 2017). The distribution of species on a local scale (

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