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Connectivity drives the functional diversity of plant dispersal traits in agricultural landscapes: the example of ditch metacommunities

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Abstract

Context

Studying communities using a trait-based approach has contributed to major advances in the understanding of community assembly mechanisms, but research has primarily focused on the effect of local biotic and abiotic processes on plant assemblages.

Objectives

At the landscape level, we expect that the diversity of trait values (i.e. functional diversity) in plant assemblages is not random because there might be strong environmental constraints occurring as a filter of plant species at this level. We expect that fragmentation, through connectivity loss, may reduce functional diversity by filtering plant dispersal traits within the global pool of species toward those that present the trait values that are the most adapted. We tested this hypothesis at the metacommunity level and focused on ditch plant dispersal traits.

Methods

We characterised the functional diversity of 27 ditch bank metacommunities for three seed traits encompassing the whole dispersal process: production, buoyancy and mass. We computed four connectivity variables based on the ditch networks surrounding each metacommunity. Null models were designed to quantify functional convergence (i.e. convergence of the trait values around a mean) or divergence for each trait (i.e. dissimilarity in plant trait values).

Result

At the metacommunity level, we demonstrate that (1) connectivity loss reduces the functional diversity of dispersal traits (seed production and seed buoyancy), leading to the convergence of trait values, whereas more connected landscapes promote randomness, or even divergence (seed mass) in trait values; (2) these changes are due to the modification in the number of occurrence of plant species over the nine local communities sampled, rather than in species identity.

Conclusions

Our results indicated that, at the metacommunity level, reduced connectivity acts as a filter on the dispersal traits of plant species, promoting the broad distribution of species with efficient dispersal abilities in such landscapes. Thus, functional diversity helps us to understand the mechanisms underlying the effects of fragmentation on biodiversity.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Jean-Louis Wattez and Céline Wattez for logistical help and fieldwork organisation, Justine Berthoux, Mélanie Cosquer, Pauline Defives, Renaud Demarle, Fréderi Bac, Annick De Jonckheere, Alain De Jonckheere, Monique Farda, Jean-Philippe Robert and Yves Mannessier for their participation to the field surveys. We also thank Eric Petit for helpful statistical advices. This research was funded by the Nord—Pas de Calais region (CorEcol project).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR 6553 Ecobio, CNRS, Université Rennes 1, Campus de Beaulieu, 35042, Rennes, France

    Lisa Favre-Bac, Cendrine Mony, Françoise Burel, Gaëtan Seimandi-Corda & Aude Ernoult

  2. UMR 1349 IGEPP, INRA, Université Rennes 1, Campus Beaulieu, 35042, Rennes Cedex, France

    Gaëtan Seimandi-Corda

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  1. Lisa Favre-Bac
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  2. Cendrine Mony
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  5. Aude Ernoult
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Correspondence to Aude Ernoult.

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Favre-Bac, L., Mony, C., Burel, F. et al. Connectivity drives the functional diversity of plant dispersal traits in agricultural landscapes: the example of ditch metacommunities. Landscape Ecol 32, 2029–2040 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-017-0564-1

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