Early‐ and late‐flowering guilds respond differently to landscape spatial structure

Abstract

Species with unique phenologies have distinct trait syndromes and environmental affinities, yet there has been little exploration of whether community assembly processes differ for plants with different phenologies. In this study, we ask whether early‐ and late‐blooming species differ in the ways that dispersal, persistence and resource acquisition traits shape plant occurrence patterns in patchy habitats. We sampled plant communities in 51 Ozark dolomite glade grasslands, which range in size from <1 ha to >100 ha. We modelled the occurrence of 71 spring‐ and 43 summer‐blooming grassland species in these patches, using as predictors both environmental variables (landscape structure, soil resources) and plant traits related to dispersal, longevity and resource acquisition. We were especially interested in how the environmental variables and plant traits interacted to determine the occurrence of phenological strategies in habitats that vary in size and isolation. Summer‐blooming species with better persistence and dispersal abilities had higher relative frequencies in smaller, more isolated habitat patches, and summer‐blooming species with higher specific leaf area—suggesting fast growth and low stress tolerance—were more likely to occur in patches with greater soil organic matter and clay content. However, spring‐blooming species showed much weaker interactions between functional traits and environmental gradients, perhaps because environmental conditions are less harsh in spring than in summer. Synthesis. Several axes of plant life‐history variation may simultaneously influence community responses to habitat connectivity. In this case, explicitly considering plant phenology helped identify generalizable relationships between functional traits and landscape spatial structure.

Plant age affects intraspecific variation in functional traits

“…Third, maximizing growth rates in seedlings can minimize time spent as vulnerable small plants, increasing the value of resource-acquisitive strategies in young plants, which must focus on establishment rather than competition or stress tolerance (Dayrell et al 2018). Finally, while stress levels should not have changed in the greenhouse, this pattern may also be due to adaptations to increasing amounts of stress during the peak of summer under natural conditions with high heat, insect herbivory, and variable rainfall in temperate grasslands (Miller et al 2018). Trait values did not shift in the same way through time for all species and differences in growth rate could explain some of these differences.…”

Mucilage binding to ground protects seeds of many plants from harvester ants: A functional investigation

“…However, with rare exceptions, experiments on plant seed mucilage have usually tested only a single or few species and generally treat mucilage as a single binary trait. In reality, mucilage is a complex mixture of polysaccharides, which can include pectic, cellulosic and hemicellulosic sugars that varies in composition, architecture and amount across species (Grubert, 1974; Kreitschitz & Gorb, 2018; Kreitschitz et al., 2020, 2021). For example, seed mucilage of species in the Linaceae family is pectic mucilage that lacks epidermal hairs seen in Lythraceae (Stubbs & Slabas, 1982); many Brassicaceae have mucilage with an outer diffuse layer, which can be easily removed, and an inner adherent layer, which remains tightly bound to the seed, a form not seen in most other groups (Western, 2012).…”

Historical Indigenous Land-Use Explains Plant Functional Trait Diversity

“…Understanding drivers of plant traits and community diversity and composition has posed a long-standing challenge for ecologists because plant communities are influenced by multiple factors operating at different spatial and temporal scales (Miller et al 2017(Miller et al , 2018. Human land-use legacies are a potentially important driver of contemporary plant community structure and function that is often rarely considered in ecological studies (in part because historical and ancient activities are often difficult to document).…”