Drivers and patterns of community completeness suggest that Tuscan Fagus sylvatica forests can naturally have a low plant diversity  

作　　者：Emanuele Fanfarillo Leopoldo de Simone Tiberio Fiaschi Bruno Foggi Antonio Gabellini Matilde Gennai Simona Maccherini Emilia Pafumi Enrico Tordoni Daniele Viciani Giulio Zangari Claudia Angiolini 

机构地区：[1]Department of Life Sciences,University of Siena,Siena,53100,Italy [2]National Biodiversity Future Center(NBFC),Palermo,90133,Italy [3]Department of Biology,University of Florence,Florence,50121,Italy [4]Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences,University of Tartu,Tartu,50409,Estonia [5]Department of Sciences,University of Roma Tre,Rome,00154,Italy

出　　处：《Forest Ecosystems》2025年第2期190-200,共11页森林生态系统(英文版)

基　　金：funded by the Tuscany region(project Nat-NET);Project funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan(NRRP),Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.4-Call for tender No.3138 of 16 December 2021,rectified by Decree n.3175 of 18 December 2021 of Italian Ministry of University and Research funded by the European Union-NextGenerationEU;Project code CN_00000033,Concession Decree No.1034 of 17 June 2022 adopted by the Italian Ministry of University and Research,CUP B63C22000650007,Project title“National Biodiversity Future Center-NBFC”.

摘　　要：European beech(Fagus sylvatica L.)forests can have a high variability in plant species richness and abundance,from monospecific stands to highly species-rich communities.To understand what causes the low plant diversity observed in some beech forests,we analyzed the drivers of plant community completeness in 155 vegetation plots.Data were collected in mature,closed-canopy beech forests in Tuscany,central Italy.Site-specific species pools were estimated based on species co-occurrences.We used Generalized Least Squares linear modeling to assess the effects of anthropogenic and environmental drivers on the community completeness of whole communities and on the set of specialist species of beech forests.We also tested the response of the total cover of the herb layer to the selected predictors and related both the predictive and response variables to species composition in a Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling ordination.The community completeness of whole communities and that of beech forest specialists were negatively affected by total beech cover and positively influenced by slope.Moreover,the community completeness of whole communities was negatively impacted by elevation and positively influenced by disturbance frequency.The cover of the herb layer decreased with increasing beech cover,elevation,and precipitation.High community completeness and high cover of the herb layer were associated with the presence of thermophilic species of mixed deciduous woods in low-elevation beech forests.Our results suggest that a low plant community completeness and a low cover of the herb layer are mainly due to the competition by beech itself when it forms pure forests in its ecological optimum.Such competition is better exerted at upper elevations and in sites with low slopes,where beech litter accumulation is a limiting factor for understory species.Such evidence suggests that species absence in mature beech forests is mainly due to natural drivers and should therefore not be considered an indicator of ecological degradation o

关 键 词：BIODIVERSITY Community ecology Dark diversity Forest structure Species absence Species pool 

分 类 号：S718.5[农业科学—林学]