Abstract
Context
Despite decades of research, there is an intense debate about the consistency of the hump-shaped pattern describing the relationship between diversity and disturbance as predicted by the intermediate disturbance hypothesis (IDH). Previous meta-analyses have not explicitly considered interactive effects of disturbance frequency and intensity of disturbance on plant species diversity in terrestrial landscapes.
Objective
We conducted meta-analyses to test the applicability of IDH by simultaneously examining the relationship between species richness, disturbance frequency (quantified as time since last disturbance as originally proposed) and intensity of disturbance in forest landscapes.
Methods
The effects of disturbance frequency, intensity, and their interaction on species richness was evaluated using a mixed-effects model.
Results
We found that species richness peaks at intermediate frequency after both high and intermediate disturbance intensities, but the richness-frequency relationship differed between intensity classes.
Conclusions
Our study highlights the need to measure multiple disturbance components that could help reconcile conflicting empirical results on the effect of disturbance on plant species diversity.
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Acknowledgments
The study was funded by the Ontario Government of Canada through the Ontario Trillium Scholarship (OTS) for a doctoral research and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (DG283336-09). We thank Patrick Gauthier, Gabriel Danyagri, Samuel Bartels, Chander Shahi and Kevin Crowe for their comments and editorial assistance.
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Yeboah, D., Chen, H.Y.H. Diversity–disturbance relationship in forest landscapes. Landscape Ecol 31, 981–987 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-015-0325-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-015-0325-y