Abstract
Predicting how biodiversity affects ecosystem functioning requires a multifaceted approach based on the partitioning of diversity into its taxonomic and functional facets and thus redundancy. Here, we investigated how species richness (S), functional diversity (FD) and functional redundancy (FR) are affected by forest structure. Sixty-eight abandoned coppice-with-standards plots were selected in two mountain areas of the Apennine chain. We performed linear models to quantify the influence of structural parameters on S, FD and FR of clonal traits. Each diversity facet was affected differently by structural parameters, suggesting a complex interweaving of processes that influence the understory layer. Namely, tree layer density influences S, the height of the standards affects the lateral spread and persistence of clonal growth organs, and diameter of standards affects the FD of the number of clonal offspring. Opposite relationships compared to FD was found for the FR, suggesting how clonal traits play a key role in species assemblage. The observation that structural parameters exert opposite impact on FR seems to indicate a counterbalance effect on ecosystem stability. Multifaceted approaches yield a better understanding of relationship between forest structure and understory, and this knowledge can be exploited to formulate indications for more sustainable management practices.
Highlights
The continual loss of biodiversity induced by human-driven global changes is one of the major concerns of ecologists [1,2,3], and the challenge of predicting how biodiversity changes may affect ecosystem functioning has yet to be resolved [4]
The present study investigated the effect of forest structure on different facets of understory plant diversity, focusing on clonal traits, in abandoned Apennine beech (Fagus sylvatica) forests previously managed as CWS
Concerning the species richness (S), we found that the best fitting model was related to the subordinate density of the trees on 400 m2 (R2 = 19%; Akaike information criterion (AIC) = 440; Table 2), with a negative effect
Summary
The continual loss of biodiversity induced by human-driven global changes is one of the major concerns of ecologists [1,2,3], and the challenge of predicting how biodiversity changes may affect ecosystem functioning has yet to be resolved [4]. The number of species (species richness) has been considered the only measure able to link biodiversity to ecosystem functioning [5,6], and it was assumed that the lack of niche complementarity is a prerequisite for species coexistence. This assumption led to the widespread concept that an increase in ecosystem functioning should be mirrored by an increase in the number of species [5]. The fact that coexisting species with similar traits are present in a given assemblage indicates that there is not a general relationship between species richness and ecosystem functions, and it is impossible to attribute variations in ecosystem function exclusively to taxonomic causes [7,8,13,14]
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