INVESTIGADORES
MARTINEZ PASTUR Guillermo Jose
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Assembly rules allow to test quantitatively the resilience of riparian plant communities to beaver invasion in sub-Antarctic forests
Autor/es:
P WALLEN; CH ANDERSON; G MARTÍNEZ PASTUR; MV LENCINAS
Lugar:
BUENOS AIRES
Reunión:
Congreso; IV Reunion Binacional de Ecología; 2010
Resumen:
This study quantifies the resilience of riparian herbaceous communities of subantarctic forests in Chile
and Argentina to beaver invasion. We characterized the divergence in compositional and spatial structure
of species co-occurrence, comparing pristine and impacted communities along a beaver meadow age
sequence. Assemblages were characterized from field surveys carried out between 20022006 in Tierra del
Fuego island. Principal Component Analysis was performed to compare species composition between
pristine and different aged meadows created after beaver impact, and a co-occurrence index (C-score)
was used to measure divergence in spatial structure of assemblages. Spatial structure as well as vegetation
composition of meadows showed an increasingly divergent trend from unmodified sites to beaver
meadow with greater age. These results indicate that understory vegetation in deciduous subantarctic
forests are not resilient to beaver invasion impacts, and therefore, this introduced species is expected to
homogenize landscape diversity of riparian ecosystem and threaten native riparian forest vegetation
assemblages.