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Interaction between light availability and grazing enhances species richness and turnover of vascular plants in shrubby pastures in Romania

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Abstract

Shrubs in pastures are expected to adversely affect plant species diversity and community composition at various spatial scales. We recorded vegetation composition as well as light conditions and other environmental variables in 105 1 m2 plots nested in 35 sampling sites in shrubby pastures in Romanian Banat. We used generalized linear models, generalized linear mixed-effects models, and linear regression to find determinants of species turnover and richness at patch and community level. We expected shrubs to negatively influence species richness on the patch level but to introduce spatial heterogeneity to the light availability resulting in a unimodal relationship of light availability with species richness on the community level. Species turnover was significantly influenced by light conditions, grazing variability, and distance between the plots. We found a unimodal relationship between light availability and species richness consistently across the two spatial scales in grazed sites. However, the same relationship changed its shape from linear to unimodal in non-grazed sites. Shrubs in pastures may not be considered as a threat to plant species diversity. Instead, they contribute significantly to plant species diversity and vegetation heterogeneity.

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Abbreviations

αc :

Community-level species richness

αp :

Patch-level species richness

DIF:

The percentage of diffuse solar radiation reaching the undergrowth

DIR:

The percentage of direct solar radiation reaching the undergrowth

GLM:

Generalized linear models

GLMM:

Generalized linear mixed-effects models

IDH:

Intermediate disturbance hypothesis

PDSI:

Potential direct solar radiation

SIM:

Multiple-site dissimilarity measure based on the Simpson dissimilarity index (species turnover

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Acknowledgements

We thank Lucie Kačmarová, Magdalena Klárová, Marie Smyčková, Adam Veselý, and Pavel Wiesner for their help with fieldwork. We thank three anonymous reviewers and editor Ladislav Mucina for their useful comments on the manuscript. The work was supported by the Operational Programme Education for Competitiveness “Creation and development of a multidisciplinary team on the platform of landscape ecology” (CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0004) with the contribution of EU resources and resources from the state budget of the Czech Republic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Silva Tarouca Research Institute for Landscape and Ornamental Gardening, Květnové náměstí 391, 252 43, Průhonice, Czech Republic

    J. Vojta

  2. Department of Forest Botany, Dendrology and Geobiocoenology, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology, Mendel University in Brno, Zemědělská 3, 613 00, Brno, Czech Republic

    D. Volařík

  3. Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Benátská 2, 128 01, Prague, Czech Republic

    P. Kovář

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  1. J. Vojta
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Correspondence to J. Vojta.

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Nomenclature: Sârbu et al. (2013).

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Vojta, J., Volařík, D. & Kovář, P. Interaction between light availability and grazing enhances species richness and turnover of vascular plants in shrubby pastures in Romania. COMMUNITY ECOLOGY 21, 67–77 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42974-020-00007-6

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