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Geomorphological disturbance affects ecological driving forces and plant turnover along an altitudinal stress gradient on alpine slopes

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Abstract

The altitudinal gradient is considered as a stress gradient for plant species because the development and fitness of plant communities tend to decrease as a result of the extreme environmental conditions present at high elevations. Abiotic factors are predicted to be the primary filter for species assemblage in high alpine areas, influencing biotic interactions through both competition for resources and positive interactions among species. We hypothesised that the relative importance of the ecological driving forces that affect the biotic interactions within plant communities changes along an elevation gradient on alpine debris slopes. We used multiple gradient analyses of 180 vegetation plots along an altitudinal range from ~1,600 to 2,600 m and single 100 m-bands in the Adamello-Presanella Group (Central Alps) to investigate our hypothesis; we measured multiple environmental variables related to different ecological driving forces. Our results illustrate that resource limitations at higher elevations affect not only the shift from competition to facilitation among species. A geomorphological disturbance regime along alpine slopes favours the resilience of the high-altitude species within topographic/geomorphological traps. An understanding of the ecological driving forces and positive interactions as a function of altitude may clarify the mechanisms underlying plant responses to present and future environmental changes.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Università of Milano-Bicocca, Università of Pisa, Museo di Scienze Naturali di Brescia and by the Italian MIUR Project (PRIN 2010-11): “Response of morphoclimatic system dynamics to global changes and related geomorphological hazards” (national and local coordinator C. Baroni). The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments which improved the quality of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Ambiente e del Territorio, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Piazza della Scienza 1, 20126, Milan, Italy

    Rodolfo Gentili & Sergio Sgorbati

  2. Museo Civico di Scienze Naturali di Brescia, Via Ozanam 4, 25128, Brescia, Italy

    Stefano Armiraglio

  3. Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Pisa and CNR, Istituto di Geoscienze e Georisorse, Via S. Maria 53, 56126, Pisa, Italy

    Carlo Baroni

Authors
  1. Rodolfo Gentili
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  2. Stefano Armiraglio
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  3. Sergio Sgorbati
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  4. Carlo Baroni
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rodolfo Gentili.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Table ST1

Climatic data from 13 meteorological stations of the Adamello-Presanella Group. (XLS 28 kb)

Table ST2

Species, dispersal strategies (DS) and Grime’s CSR strategies. (XLS 51 kb)

Table ST3

List of species abbreviation (XLS 24 kb)

Table ST4

Contribution to dissimilarity (Bray–Curtis index), according to the SIMPER analysis of the first nine species per band and of the first 19 species for the whole altitudinal range. Abbreviations: see Table ST3. (XLS 22 kb)

Figure SF1

Whole set of the CCA analyses (for all altitudinal bands). (TIFF 2696 kb)

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Gentili, R., Armiraglio, S., Sgorbati, S. et al. Geomorphological disturbance affects ecological driving forces and plant turnover along an altitudinal stress gradient on alpine slopes. Plant Ecol 214, 571–586 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-013-0190-1

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