The diversity and conservation of plant reproductive and dispersal functional traits in human‐dominated tropical landscapes

Abstract

Summary1 Human-altered landscapes dominate the planet, yet little is known about their capacity to sustain plant functional diversity. Most conservation-orientated studies of such landscapes focus on species diversity, whereas less attention is given to functional traits and their conservation. 2 We examine the functional diversity of herbaceous and shrubby plant communities in three forest habitats (understorey, tree-fall gaps and riverbanks) and three deforested habitats (pasture, roadside vegetation and pasture riverbanks), each replicated in three human-dominated landscapes in southern Costa Rica. We focus on six categorical traits related to forest regeneration, reproduction and dispersal: pollination mechanism, dispersal mechanism, growth form, fruit type, fruit size and seed size. 3 We compared trait state richness and composition of each trait in forested and deforested habitats and how three pollination states (bat, bird and bee pollination) and three dispersal states (fur, bird and monkey dispersal) of conservation interest were distributed across these landscapes. 4 Only one trait state was missing from forest, and none was missing from deforested habitats. Understorey and pasture were consistently trait state poor. Forested and deforested plots differed in trait state composition for all traits. Pasture riverbanks and road verges were compositionally similar to forest riverbanks and tree-fall gaps, for multiple traits. There were more compositional similarities between forested and deforested habitat types when abundance of individuals with a trait state was used as the basis for similarity measures than when the number of species with each trait state was used. Bat-, bird-and bee-pollinated plants and plants with bird-and monkey-dispersed fruits were most common in forest and pasture riverbanks whereas species with fur-dispersed seeds were more common in all deforested habitats. 5 Functional diversity patterns were inconsistent across habitat types and locations but overall functional similarity was high between forested and deforested communities. Patterns of functional diversity were far more variable between habitats and landscapes than the consistent patterns found previously for species diversity.

Geographical and taxonomic biases in research on biodiversity in human‐modified landscapes

“…Nonetheless, the recognized value of farmland biodiversity in landscapes long dominated by humans (see Bignal andMcCracken 1996, Pykala 2000) testifies to the importance of the early consideration of biogeography of human-modified landscapes in land-use planning for regions that retain large tracts of relatively undisturbed land (e.g., wilderness areas (Mittermeier 2003)). A comparative approach is important to inform conservation strategies in human-modified landscapes because it allows for consideration of community composition and functional trait richness over space and time (e.g., Mayfield et al 2006, Flynn et al 2009), investigation of processes that link occurrence to persistence (e.g., Trimble and van Aarde 2011), and, to avoid biotic homogenization, distinction between landuses amenable to invasive or cosmopolitan species versus more localized species (see Filippi-Codaccioni et al 2010). …”

Utility of external morphometrics for cryptic species identification: A case study of two species in Poecilus 'samurai' (Coleoptera: Carabidae)

“…In the present paper, we treated these clearly recognizable species as RTU(s) (recognizable taxonomic unit; see Oliver and Beattie, 1993). The concept of RTU has been accepted in many studies of ecology (e.g., OliveiraFilho et al, 1997;Mayfield et al, 2006) or phylogeny (e.g., Sasakawa and Kubota, 2005;Sota et al, 2005), in which the essential conclusions of studies are not affected by the scientific name of materials.…”

Avaliação temporal das características funcionais de espécies arbóreas em fitofisionomias da transição Cerrado-Amazônia, Mato Grosso, Brasil

“…A diversidade funcional traz informações importantes sobre as características das espécies nas comunidades (PETCHEY; GASTON, 2006;MOUCHET et al, 2010) e, portanto, explica melhor a estrutura e o funcionamento dos ecossistemas (PETCHEY; GASTON, 2006;MOUCHET et al, 2010;CIANCIARUSO et al, 2012;DANTAS et al, 2013). Os padrões de diversidade dos traços funcionais podem ser usados como fortes argumentos para a conservação dos habitats (MAYFIELD et al, 2006), que tem sido fomentados por estudos de diversidade funcional em comunidades vegetais do Cerrado (e.g. CIANCIARUSO et al, 2009;DANTAS et al, 2013).…”