Abstract
Species richness is the most commonly used metric to quantify biodiversity. However, examining dark diversity, the group of absent species which can potentially inhabit a site, can provide additional insights about how communities are assembled. In this study we aimed to understand how human impacts and environment affect the observed diversity, dark diversity, completeness (how large is the observed diversity compared to dark diversity) and species pool size (observed and dark diversity together) of vascular plants (i.e., trees, shrubs, herbs and lianas) in Caatinga. Along 144 0.4 ha plots for trees and 0.04 ha plots for shrubs, herbs, and lianas, we recorded 2148 stems from 232 native species. We show that larger, well-connected and wetter fragments present either more observed diversity or larger species pools of vascular plants, indicating that these fragments may act as biodiversity reservoirs in Caatinga. However, these drivers are usually plant life-form dependent, with some variables such as chronic anthropogenic disturbance, habitat amount, soil and temperature also playing secondary roles on observed and dark diversity of different life-forms. Overall, by including dark diversity in the analyses we were able to identify additional effects of human impacts and environment on vegetation change, which would not be possible to be captured by using species richness only. Finally, our results highlight the complexity of human-modified landscapes in dry forests and stress the importance of considering the whole species pool of plants and different growth life-forms when assessing the effects of disturbance and environment on Caatinga vegetation.
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Data availability
The species data and the soil variables, phosphorus, base saturation index and clay content, were provided by National Forest Inventory (NFI) (http://snif.florestal.gov.br/pt-br/inventario-florestal-nacional-ifn/ifn-dados-abertos/ifn-resultados-ceara, accessed on 14 December 2020); the climatic variables, annual mean temperature, annual precipitation and precipitation of driest quarter data were obtained from the Climatologies at high resolution for the earth’s land surface areas (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-00587-y, accessed on 5 March 2020); the deforestation variables was obtained from acute and chronic (http://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k0p2ngf57, 10 October 2022) disturbances.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to the Graduate Program in Ecology and Natural Resources, Federal Univesity of Ceará, Tartu Botanical Gardens, and Macroecology workgroup, Oecologicum-Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu.
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This study was supported by Cearense Foundation for Scientific and Technological Development (Funcap), Higher Education Personnel Improvement Coordination (Capes) and Estonian Research Council (PRG609). DPFT was supported by the Mobilitas Pluss programme of the Estonian Research Council (MOBERC40 and MOBERC100).
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Conceptualization, MDOGA, JCS and CEC; data curation, MDOGA, JCS, CEC; PACLP, DPFT and MP; formal analysis, MDOGA and JCS; investigation, MDOGA, JCS, and CEC; methodology, MDOGA, JCS, CEC; PACLP, DPFT, FH and MP; resources, FSA; software, MDOGA, JCS, CEC; PACLP, DPFT and MP; supervision, JCS and MP; validation, MDOGA, JCS, CEC; PACLP, DPFT, FH, FSA and MP; visualization, MDOGA, JCS, PACLP, DPFT and MP; writing—original draft, MDOGA and JCS; writing—review and editing, MDOGA, JCS, MP and DPFT. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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de Oliveira Gonçalves-Araújo, M.D., de Carvalho, C.E., Pequeno, P.A.C.L. et al. Observed and dark diversity of plants’ life-forms are driven by climate and human impacts in a tropical dry forest. Biodivers Conserv 33, 759–773 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-023-02771-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-023-02771-z