Can we predict which species win when new habitat becomes available?

Abstract

Land cover change is a key component of anthropogenic global environmental change, contributing to changes in environmental conditions of habitats. These changes can lead to the redistribution of species and shifts in the functional composition and properties of ecosystems. Deforestation is globally the most widespread anthropogenically driven land cover change leading to conversion from closed forest to open non-forest habitat. The consequences of these functional habitat changes on species distributions are only poorly understood. This study investigates the relative roles of geographic features, species climatic niche characteristics and species traits in determining the ability of open-habitat plant species to take advantage of recently opened habitats. We use current occurrence records of 18 herbaceous, predominantly open-habitat species of the genus Acaena (Rosaceae) to determine their prevalence in recently opened habitat. Geographic features of the spatial distribution of open habitat, species’ climatic niche characteristics, and species traits related to dispersal were tested their correlation with species’ prevalence in anthropogenically opened habitat. While primary open habitat (naturally open) was characterised by cold climates, secondary open habitat (naturally closed but anthropogenically opened) is characterised by warmer and wetter conditions. We found high levels of variation in the prevalence of secondary open habitat among the investigated species indicating differences between species in their ability to colonise newly opened habitat. For the species investigated, geographical and climatic niche factors showed generally stronger relationships with species’ prevalence in secondary open habitat than functional traits did. For small herbaceous species, geographical and environmental factors appear to be more important than species functional traits for facilitating expansion into secondary open habitats. Our results suggested that the land cover change might have triggered the shifts of factors controlling open-habitat plant distributions from the competition with forest trees to current environmental constraints.