Combining plant and animal traits to assess community functional responses to disturbance

Abstract

There is a general consensus that functional traits are reliable indicators of adaptation of organisms to particular environmental characteristics. In this study we relate the combined distributions of species traits of plants and animals to disturbance regimes in chestnut forests of southern Switzerland affected by regular winter fires. We used co-inertia analysis for combining the trait response of 471 invertebrate species (117 001 individuals) and 81 plant species at 23 sites with different fire and cutting histories. Trait response was assessed by calculating the variation in weighted mean traits averaged over the communities and by using mean traits in multivariate analyses. The analysis showed a strong association between plant and animal traits under fire constraints (Monte-Carlo test, p 00.0045). Plants and animal distributions show parallel trends in responses to fire which selects traits relating to persistence (ability to survive), resilience (ability to recover) and mobility. Warmth-demanding insects, herbivores, flying carnivores and pollinators were associated with recent fires, as were annual, ruderal and light-demanding plant species with long flowering duration. Small arthropods feeding on dead wood and those with narrow habitat requirements were associated with low fire frequency and unburnt sites, as were competitive plants with large seeds favoring moist sites. The spatial association between plant and animal traits reflected adaptations that promote survival in the disturbance regime, while the disturbance acts as an environmental filter on the distribution and assemblage of the trait values within communities.This combined analysis of plant and invertebrate traits distributions illustrates how community and ecosystem responses can be monitored and the results generalized across localities and disturbance types. Analyses of traits that cross trophic levels provide powerful and promising tools for validating management procedures and controlling ecosystem functions.

Functional traits as indicators of biodiversity response to land use changes across ecosystems and organisms

“…Cornelissen et al 2003;. In this context the complementarity of taxonomical and functional indicators has the potential to lead to an improved system of biodiversity monitoring, especially in very diverse animal communities ) and across trophical guilds trying to combine plants and animals (Moretti and Legg 2009). In our study, we deliberately chose examples of animals that are widely used as indicators for different ecosystem types and different monitoring schemes (Bongers 1990;Siepel 1995;EASAC 2005;Gregory et al 2005;Douglas et al 2009) and show that simple functional metrics (e.g.…”

“…They are numerous and diverse, but can be sampled relatively easily and often passively with traps. Specific habitat or resource requirements make them responsive to environmental change (Steffan-Dewenter and Tscharntke 2000; Moretti and Legg 2009). Despite high diversity and small size they can be identified to species by specialists or morphospecies by trained non-specialists who, using the concept of recognizable taxonomic units (RTU), can provide an accurate proxy of species diversity (Oliver and Beattie 1996).…”

“…Similarly, canopy architecture has been used as one of the most important indicators for biodiversity of different trophic groups in Swiss grasslands (Schwab et al 2002). Further, Moretti and Legg (2009) describe a method to assess functional response to disturbance by combining plant and animal traits and suggest new challenging opportunities for comparing traits across trophic levels. Finally functional indicators can also greatly improve predicting the functions or services provided by an ecosystem as they are proxies for the rate, or relative importance, of particular processes (Diaz et al 2007;de Bello et al, this issue).…”

Toward the use of testate amoeba functional traits as indicator of floodplain restoration success

“…The rationale for this approach is that FT are likely to be selected by environmental conditions and hence analysing them provides more direct information on ecosystem characteristics than the species composition of a community. Functional traits and measures of community functional diversity provide a way to overcome taxonomic limitations that are especially critical for minute soil taxa and tend to correlate more strongly than traditional species diversity with ecosystem functions such as productivity [2], resilience to perturbations [3], or regulation of biogeochemical fluxes [4].…”

Vplivi obremenitev na združbe makrofitov in njihov pomen pri upravljanju z rečnimi ekosistemi / Impacts of stressors on macrophyte communities and their importance in river ecosystem management

“…2015). Funkcionalne značilnosti omogočajo vpogled v mehanizme, ki delujejo v ozadju odzivov na naravne in antropogene spremembe (Moretti & Legg 2009). Funkcionalne značilnosti, ki se pogosto uporabljajo za ugotavljanje odzivov makrofitov na okoljske dejavnike, so povezane z življenjsko obliko, obliko in hitrostjo rasti, fotosinteznimi potmi, morfologijo listov in kemijo (Violle in sod.…”