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Plant species loss and community nestedness after leguminous tree Acacia pycnantha invasion in a Mediterranean ecosystem

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Abstract

Invasions of ecosystems by alien species are one of the major threats to biodiversity. Among alien plant species, members of the family Fabaceae s.l. represent some of the most dangerous and well known global invaders. In Mediterranean ecosystems, many Australian acacias have been found to establish and rapidly spread, often determining severe impacts on understorey vegetation. In the present work, we report a case study of an Acacia pycnantha invasion in a typical Mediterranean matorral (Elba Island, central Mediterranean Sea, Italy). We conducted a survey of understorey plant communities across an invasion gradient from non-invaded to transitional and invaded areas, aiming to quantify the impacts on the understorey assemblage and to investigate the ecological processes involved in the changes in species composition. The understorey plant community was highly affected starting from the intermediate stage of invasion. Species richness, diversity and total cover were all lower in invaded than in non-invaded plots, with a transition generally in the middle. In addition, plant community composition severely changed along the invasion gradient. The species set we recorded showed a nested structure, with the composition of species in the invaded plots representing a subset of the others. According to our findings, A. pycnantha exerted detrimental impacts on the native vegetation, mainly causing a severe species loss in the understorey assemblage and the impoverishment of the invaded ecosystems.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Jan Lepš and Petr Šmilauer (Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, CZ) for important indications regarding the statistical data analysis during the Quantitative Ecology Module at the University of South Bohemia. Thanks are also due to two anonymous reviewers and to Tomáš Herben, Associated Editor of Folia Geobotanica, for his useful comments and suggestion, which greatly improved our manuscript. The research was funded by the Tuscan Archipelago National Park (‘Indagini sulle specie esotiche vegetali dell’Arcipelago Toscano’ – Progetto CoR.E.M. – CUP E79E1000012000) and by the Tuscany Region (‘QuiT-project: Inquinamento biologico e cambiamento climatico: scenari per la Toscana’, POR-FSE-TOSCANA 2007-2013, responsable prof.ssa F. Gherardi). The project was also supported by the COST Action TD1209 ‘Alien Challenge’.

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  1. Department of Biology (BIO), University of Florence, via G. La Pira 4, I-50121, Florence, Italy

    Lorenzo Lazzaro, Claudia Giuliani, Renato Benesperi, Roberto Calamassi & Bruno Foggi

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  1. Lorenzo Lazzaro
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Correspondence to Lorenzo Lazzaro.

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Appendix 1 Plant species sampled in the three invasion statuses ordered alphabetically. Total species occurrences and relative abundance per invasion status expressed as the percentage of the total individuals found are shown. The abbreviation adopted in the CCA diagram is given. Nomenclature follows the online databases Euro+Med (2006–2014), Euro+Med PlantBase – the information resource for Euro-Mediterranean plant diversity (ww2.bgbm.org/EuroPlusMed, accessed 2014 May 7) and The Plant List v. 1.1 (www.theplantlist.org, accessed 2014 May 7).
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Lazzaro, L., Giuliani, C., Benesperi, R. et al. Plant species loss and community nestedness after leguminous tree Acacia pycnantha invasion in a Mediterranean ecosystem. Folia Geobot 50, 229–238 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12224-015-9222-z

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