Land abandonment in sub-Mediterranean grasslands causes the spread of tall-grasses, affecting biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Mowing allows the recovery of the coenological composition after invasion, but the mechanisms acting at the fine-scale are poorly investigated. Since 2010 in the Central Apennines, we fenced a grassland invaded by Brachypodium rupestre, divided it into two areas, half of each was mowed biyearly and half remained unmown. In 2017 we selected ten 20 × 20 cm experimental units per half-area, collecting data on species occurrences, plant traits, B. rupestre height and phytomass. We used generalized linear mixed-effect modelling to disentangle the role of mowing from the impact of B. rupestre features in driving the community functional variations. Mowing was the main driver in the recovery process, acting as an abiotic filter (enhancement of tolerance-avoidance strategies). Furthermore, the reduction of weaker competitor exclusion processes fostered the increase of functional variation between coexisting species. Both drivers acted on different plant traits (e.g., mowing on life span, vegetative propagation types and plant height, mowing and B. rupestre features on space occupation types, seed mass and leaf anatomy), generally enhancing the extent of functional strategies related to resource acquisition and storage, reproduction, space occupation and temporal niche exploitation.

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Today's Mediterranean landscapes result from the interaction between ecosystems and anthropogenic activities. This study aims to assess how the land-use changes between the midnineteenth and end of the twentieth century influenced the temporal continuity of the ecosystems in central Apennines (central Italy). Information was acquired from Gregorian cadaster maps, orthophotos and aerial photos (1850, 1954, 1980 and 2010), digitized and georeferenced using QGIS 3.10.1 software. Marked changes in land-use types were found. From 1850 to 1954, grasslands were widely transformed into arable lands, but in the next 60 years changed again into new grasslands and forests. Forests underwent a slow but continuous expansion from 1850 to 2010. Only a small percentage of the forest and grassland patches (14 and 16 percent, respectively) have seen ecological continuity. These considerations call attention to temporal continuity of ecosystems, together with the historical dynamism of landscapes, in defining land management and nature conservation policies.

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Background and aims – The research aim was to investigate the relation between large-scale geographic factors and the functional structure of the herbaceous layer of calcareous beech forests in the Apennines, managed as high forest.Material and methods – We selected 163 plots (20 × 20 m), ranging from Central to South Italy, using a random stratified sampling design. We correlated the effect sizes of traits’ community-weighted means, functional richness, evenness, divergence, dispersion, and Rao’s quadratic entropy, with the main axes of variation in species composition.Key results – The geographical range played a weak role in shaping the species composition of the herbaceous layer. However, we found evidence of functional convergence towards the northern sectors of the study area, where traits linked to resource retention strategies and vegetative spread are filtered. We did not find any evidence of convergence northwards for leaf phenology and pollination types.Conclusion – The increase of the intensity in the environmental stress was associated with a decrease of diversity for traits related to resource conservation strategies and vegetative propagation. On the contrary, the lower cold stress intensity southwards fostered a better niche partitioning, ensuring the coexistence of species with different modalities of resource acquisition and conservation.