IMBIV   05474
INSTITUTO MULTIDISCIPLINARIO DE BIOLOGIA VEGETAL
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Long-term forest use results in community plant functional trait convergence in a subtropical seasonally dry forest
Autor/es:
CONTI, G.; DÍAZ, S.; ENRICO, L.; HUYGENS, D.
Lugar:
Pirenópolis
Reunión:
Simposio; 59th Annual Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS); 2016
Institución organizadora:
International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS)
Resumen:
A debate exists around the effect of forest use on processes and societal benefitsprovided by these ecosystems. Functional traits? the biological attributes of organisms -is expected to have important effects on these processes and also determine thecommunity responses to environmental factors. Subtropical seasonally dry forest fromSouth America has been experiencing accelerated land-cover changes in the last fewdecades. Over large areas, forests have been replaced by shrublands, as a result ofhistoric logging and grazing. Here, we analyze changes in plant community functionaldiversity (including variety and identity) in response to long-term forest use in dryforests of central Argentina. Specifically, we addressed the following questions: (i) Howdoes historic forest use affect plant community functional diversity (in terms of varietyand identity)? (ii) How does historic forest use modify community assembly rules ofthese communities? With that aim, we sampled 8 functional key traits of 30 dominantspecies across 16 sites resulting from different past and present land-use regimes(mainly selective logging and grazing). Our results showed that functional identity (i.e.,the community weighted means of functional traits) remains mostly unchanged, exceptfor architectural traits (height and wood density) that were reduced across sites as aresult of historic forest extraction. Although changes in functional identity were notstrong, functional variety, in terms of both multivariate indices (RaoQ and FDisp) andunivariate indices (FDvar), tracked changes in nutrient availability and forest structureas a result of historic forest use. These results indicate that community functionalvariety is reduced across the historic forest use gradient, with functional convergencebeing an important component of community assemblage. Under the assumption(untested in this work) that a wider variety of functional traits should support a highernumber of ecosystem benefits to people, our results suggest that forest management atrelatively low intensities could provide several ecosystem benefits without risking theirlong-term provision. We also advocated the inclusion of different components offunctional diversity as an important resource in the analysis of the impact of globalchanges in these subtropical dry forests, at present being seriously transformed.