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- Title
Post‐drought community turnover and functional redundancy in a tropical forest understorey.
- Authors
Ferreira‐Santos, Karina; Garbin, Mário Luís; Carrijo, Tatiana Tavares; Torres‐Leite, Filipe; Cavatte, Paulo Cezar; Dias, André Tavares Corrêa
- Abstract
Questions: Drought events are increasingly frequent, threatening the biodiversity of tropical forests. The understorey comprises a large fraction of the total plant species richness of these systems with the presence of highly diverse angiosperm families. Here, we quantified the effects of a drought on abundance and functional structures and on the ecosystem functioning of Rubiaceae assemblages along a topographic gradient. Location: Mata das Flores State Park, an Atlantic Forest fragment in southeast Brazil. Methods: Two vegetation surveys were performed: one during an El Niño‐induced drought, and the other three years after this drought. Abundance and functional structures were assessed using the 16 most‐abundant species of Rubiaceae, which comprised 92% of the total abundance. A litter decomposition experiment was carried out to estimate the percentage of mass loss by the Rubiaceae species. We carried out Procrustes analyses on abundance and functional structures and used Generalized Linear Mixed Models to test the effects of drought and topographic habitats on taxonomic and functional compositions, and mass loss. Results: We found that the functional structure and mass loss remained constant despite significant changes in the abundance structure after the drought. Conclusion: The evidence points to the maintenance of ecosystem functioning through functional redundancy, because functionally similar less‐abundant species replaced each other after the drought. We show that swarms of species can maintain biological diversity and stability in ecosystem functioning under drought in the understorey of a tropical forest.
- Subjects
BRAZIL; TROPICAL forests; DROUGHT management; BIOLOGICAL extinction; BIODIVERSITY; SPECIES diversity; SWARMING (Zoology); ECOSYSTEMS
- Publication
Journal of Vegetation Science, 2024, Vol 35, Issue 3, p1
- ISSN
1100-9233
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/jvs.13256