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1,102 results for “plant diversity”
Close to the edge: Spatial variation in plant diversity, biomass and floral resources in conventional and agri-environment cereal fields
<p>Non-crop (segetal) plants in arable systems are commonly perceived simply as "weeds", i.e. harmful at worst and undesirable at best. The increase in management intensity in European arable systems has vastly reduced the populations of all but the most disturbance-tolerant plant species, negatively impacting the whole agricultural food web. In recent years, efforts have been made to promote agricultural biodiversity through measures such as flower strips and unsprayed field margins. However, studies of their impacts on the arable flora have rarely considered their spatial variation within the crop field. We investigated the spatial distribution of vascular plant species richness and their contribution to the food web via biomass and flower units in conventional and agri-environment cereal fields in six regions of Germany. We studied two types of in-crop measures (extensive cereals without pesticides or fertiliser, and with or without intercropping with flowering species) and one adjacent measure (neighbouring flower strip), recording at 1 m intervals from the field edge to interior. These results were then extrapolated to illustrate the effects of these measures on resource provision at the field scale. Species richness and plant biomass dropped off sharply after the first metre in the conventional treatments, regardless of the adjacent habitat. The "extensive" treatments maintained a much higher level of diversity and resource provision into the field interior. At the field level, this can mean more than sixty-fold difference in provision of flowering resources between conventional management (1900 flower units/ha) and agri-environment measures (127,000 units/ha for extensive cereals).</p> <p><em>Synthesis and applications:</em></p> <p>The strong edge effects we found in conventional cultivation support the premise that reducing field sizes could play a role in promoting in-crop biodiversity. However, incorporating extensive field margins as an agri-environment measure would be more efficient at maximising diversity of generalists whilst maintaining high yields.</p>
Plant diversity darkspots for global collection priorities: time-to-event datasets per botanical country as defined by the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD).
<p>Datasets used to predict the number of plant species remaining to be described and/or geolocated within a botanical country, which represents the third level of subdivision (generally equating to a political country) used by WGSRPD for recording plant distributions. The folder is composed of two subfolders <em>has_coords</em> and <em>has_no_coords</em> containing the time-to-event data for species with valid and no (invalidated) occurrence records within a given botanical country respectively<em>.</em></p> <ul> <li>Each folder contains a<strong> </strong>list of 361 botanical countries with the following 16 fields:</li> </ul> <pre><strong>species:</strong> species name<br><strong>time_ofdescription:</strong> year of the (first) description<br><strong>time_ofcollection:</strong> year of the collection of the earliest record<br><strong>family:</strong> species family name<br><strong>lifeform_description: </strong>the life form categorised into 4 classes <br><strong>CHELSA_bio_1: </strong>annual mean temperature (°C)<br><strong>CHELSA_bio_12:</strong> annual precipiation (mm)<br><strong>CHELSA_bio_15</strong>: temperature seasonality (-)<br><strong>CHELSA_bio_4</strong>: precipitation seasonality (-)<br><strong>elevation</strong>: elevation (m)<br><strong>range_size_area:</strong> total area of the botanical countries encompassing the species' native range <br>according to the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) (km^2) <br><strong>taxo_activity</strong>: taxonomic activity calculated as the number of named authors in the World Checklist of Vascular Plants<br>describing species from the same family during the year of description of the species,<br>divided by the number of species described within the given family that year. <br><strong>num_records_per_year:</strong> geographic activity calculated as the number of occurrence records<br>collected within the native range of the species, divided by the number of years between <br>the earliest and the lastest (first) record collected within this range.<br><strong>num_uses</strong>: number of human uses<br><strong>time_todescription:</strong> number of years between the (first) description and 1753<br><strong>time_tocollection:</strong> number of years between the (first) description and the collection of the first record of the species<br><br></pre> <p> </p>
Fig. 3 in Vascular plant diversity of the Gogunsan Archipelago in the Korean Peninsula
Fig. 3. Variations of percentage of habitat affinity types in the Go- gunsanArchipelago.
Fig. 1. A in Vascular plant diversity of the Gogunsan Archipelago in the Korean Peninsula
Fig. 1. A map of investigated area in the Gogunsan Archipelago.
Figure 2 in Plant diversity and conservation value of wetlands along a rural-urban gradient
Figure 2. NMDS ordination for the average cover-abundance per transect per site of all species.
Data and code for "Loss of pollinator diversity consistently reduces reproductive success for wild and cultivated plants"
<p>Data and code for "Loss of pollinator diversity consistently reduces reproductive success for wild and cultivated plants"</p>
Resources for studying the aesthetic and diversity values of plants and pets in shaping biodiversity loss belief among urban residents
<p><span>Considering the issues of data transparency and the cost of reproduction, all data and code snippets of the study titled "From beauty to belief: The aesthetic and diversity values of plants and pets in shaping biodiversity loss belief among urban residents" are deposited here.</span></p>
Data from: Plant diversity and density predict belowground diversity and function in an early successional alpine ecosystem
Despite decades of interest, few studies have provided evidence supporting theoretical expectations for coupled relationships between aboveground and belowground diversity and ecosystem functioning in non-manipulated naturalecosystems. We characterized plant species richness and density, soil bacterial, fungal and eukaryotic species richness and phylogenetic diversity (using 16S, ITS, and 18S gene sequencing), and ecosystem function (levels of soil C and N, and rates of microbial enzyme activities) along a natural gradient in plant richness and density in high-elevation, C-deficient soils to examine the coupling between above- and belowground systems. Overall, we observed a strong positive relationship between aboveground (plant richness and density) and belowground (bacteria, fungi, and non-fungal eukaryotes) richness. In addition to the correlations between plants and soil communities, C and N pools, and rates of enzyme activities increased as plant and soil communities became richer and more diverse. Our results suggest that the theoretically expected positive correlation between above- and belowground communities does exist in natural systems, but may be undetectable in late successional ecosystems due to the buildup of legacy organic matter that results in extremely complex belowground communities. In contrast, microbial communities in early successional systems, such as the system described here, are more directly dependent on contemporary inputs from plants and therefore are strongly correlated with plant diversity and density.
Data from: Palynology of a short sequence of the Lower Devonian Beartooth Butte Formation at Cottonwood Canyon (Wyoming): Age, depositional environments and plant diversity
<p>The Beartooth Butte Formation hosts the most extensive Early Devonian macroflora of western North America. The age of the flora at Cottonwood Canyon (Wyoming) has been constrained to the Lochkovian-Pragian interval, based on fish biostratigraphy and unpublished palynological data. We present a detailed palynological analysis of the plant-bearing layers at Cottonwood Canyon. The palynomorphs comprise 32 spore, five cryptospore, two prasinophycean algae and an acritarch species. The stratigraphic ranges of these palynomorphs indicate a late Lochkovian - Pragian age, confirming previous age assignments. Analyses on samples from three different depositional environments of the plant-bearing sequence – layers with in situ lycophyte populations, flood layers that buried those populations and an organic matter accumulation zone within a flood layer – demonstrate distinct palynofacies. Comparisons between palynomorph and plant macrofossil diversity reveal some discrepancies. Whereas zosterophylls and lycophytes, most diverse and abundant among the macrofossils, have only one known corresponding spore type (assignable to zosterophylls) in the palynomorph assemblage, the trimerophytes, rare in the macrofossil assemblage, are represented by three spore types. Some of these discrepancies reflect taphonomic differences between macrofossils and palynomorphs, others could be due to the fact that the parent plants of most palynomorph types in the Cottonwood Canyon assemblage are unknown. These observations emphasize the need for concerted efforts to bring together the knowledge of macro- and microfloras within Early Devonian localities. Nevertheless, given the palaeophytogeographic significance of the Beartooth Butte Formation flora, its palyno- and macrofossil assemblages, taken together, provide new data relevant to future discussions of Early Devonian biogeography.</p>
Beyond species richness and community composition: Using plant functional diversity to measure restoration success in jarrah forest
<p>Aim: The importance of restoring ecosystem functions to native systems that have been degraded, damaged or destroyed is increasingly recognised. Yet few studies have measured the effect of restoration efforts on ecosystem functioning or the functional diversity (FD) that underpins it. Here we assessed change in FD of restored assemblages one to 25 years after the onset of post-mine restoration.</p> <p>Location: Northern Jarrah (<i>Eucalyptus marginata</i> Donn ex Sm.) Forest bioregion of south-western Australia.</p> <p>Methods: Functional richness, evenness, divergence and dispersion were derived from five plant functional traits relevant to community reassembly. Effects of three explanatory variables (i.e., age, year restoration was initiated, and time since fire) on six response variables (i.e., four FD indices, species richness, and compositional similarity to nearby reference forest) were analysed using linear mixed models for a dataset with repeated measures of plots through time (n= 810 plots), and linear models for a sub-set of one-time measures of different aged assemblages (i.e., space-for-time approach; n= 490 plots).</p> <p>Results: Functional evenness and functional dispersion increased with age, while functional divergence and functional richness decreased with age. Functional dispersion increased with time since fire, while functional richness decreased with time since fire. Species richness decreased with age, but at 25-years, species richness was comparable to that observed in reference forest. In contrast, similarity showed no relationship with age of restored forest, and at 25-years, similarity of restored forest to reference was low compared with similarity of reference forest to itself. Three of four FD indices had not reached those of reference jarrah forest 25-years after restoration had been initiated.</p> <p>Conclusions: Reassembly of FD suggests importance of environmental filtering and high functional redundancy. A longer time frame may be needed to assess FD of restored assemblages, and in the meantime, species richness is not an adequate surrogate of FD.</p>
Fig. 4 in Wild bees (Anthophila) of Porto Santo (Madeira Archipelago) and their habitats: species diversity, distribution patterns and bee-plant network *
Fig. 4: Bipartite graph of the bee-plant network of Porto Santo.
Individual-based networks reveal the highly skewed interactions of a frugivore mutualist with individual plants in a diverse community
<p>While plant-animal interactions occur fundamentally at the individual level, the bulk of research examining the mechanisms that drive interaction patterns has focused on the species or population level. In seed-dispersal mutualisms between frugivores and plants, little is known about the role of space and individual-level variation among plants in structuring patterns of frugivore foraging and, thus, seed dispersal in a plant community. Here we use an animal perspective to examine how space and variation between individual plants affect movement and visitation by frugivores foraging on individual fruiting plants. To do this, we used a spatially explicit network approach informed by observations of the movement and foraging of a frugivorous lemur species (Eulemur rubriventer) amongst individual plants in a diverse plant community in Madagascar. The resulting hierarchical networks, in which a few individual plants received the bulk of the interactions, demonstrated how a generalist frugivore species could act as an individual-plant specialist within a plant community. The few individual plants that dominated interactions with the lemurs shaped the modular spatial structure of frugivory interactions in the community and facilitated visitation to near neighbors. This interaction structure was primarily driven by extrinsic factors, as lemur movements among plants were significantly influenced by the individual plant's spatial position and the species richness of fruiting plants in its immediate neighborhood. Individual plants in central spatial locations, with a rich fruiting neighborhood and large fruit crops, received the most visits. The observed drastic inequality in the interactions of a generalist frugivore within a highly diverse plant community highlights the importance of considering individual-level variation for essential ecosystem processes, such as seed dispersal.</p>
Data for: Plant diversity effects on herbivory are related to soil biodiversity and plant chemistry
<p><span>Insect herbivory is a key process in ecosystem functioning. While theory predicts that plant diversity modulates herbivory, the mechanistic links remain unclear. We postulated that the plant metabolome mechanistically links plant diversity and herbivory.</span></p> <p>In late summer and in spring, we assessed individual plant aboveground herbivory rates and metabolomes of seven plant species in experimental plant communities varying in plant species diversity and resource acquisition strategies. In the same communities, we also measured plant individual biomass as well as soil microbial and nematode community composition.</p> <p>Herbivory rates decreased with increasing plant species richness. Path modelling revealed that plant species richness and community resource acquisition strategy correlated with soil community composition. In particular, changes in nematode community composition were related to plant metabolome composition and thereby herbivory rates.</p> <p><span>These results suggest that soil community composition plays an important role in reducing herbivory rates with increasing plant diversity by changing plant metabolomes.</span></p>
Large wild herbivores slow down the rapid decline of plant diversity in a tropical forest biodiversity hotspot
<p>1. The UN declaration of the Decade of Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 emphasizes the need for effective measures to restore ecosystems and safeguard biodiversity. Large herbivores regulate many ecosystem processes and functions, yet their potential as a nature-based solution to buffer against long-term temporal declines in biodiversity associated to global change and restore diversity in secondary forests remains unknown.</p> <p>2. By means of an exclusion experiment, we tested experimentally the buffering effects of large wild herbivores to avert against long-term biodiversity collapse in old-growth and secondary tropical forests in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil where sapling abundance and species richness declined circa 20% over the course of 10 years. The experiment comprised 50 large herbivore exclosure-open control plot pairs (25 at the old-growth forest and 25 at the secondary forest), where 2m2 were monitored in every plot during a 10-year period.</p> <p>3. Large herbivores were able to decelerate diversity declines and compositional change in the species-rich old-growth forest, but only decelerated compositional change in the secondary forest. In contrast, declines in species richness and abundance were unaffected by large herbivores on either forest.</p> <p>4. The buffering effects of large herbivores were strongly non-linear and contingent on the initial level of diversity at the patch scale: highly diverse communities suffered the strongest collapse in the absence of large herbivores. Thus, larger buffering effects of large herbivores on the old growth forest are the logical consequence of large herbivores buffering the many high diversity plant communities found in this forest. Conversely, as the secondary forest held fewer high diversity patches, buffering effects on the secondary forest were weak.</p> <p>5. Synthesis and applications: Our study indicates that large herbivores have moderate yet critical effects on slowing down community change and diversity loss of highly diverse plant communities, thus suggesting that the conservation of (and potentially trophic rewilding with) large herbivores is a fundamental nature-based solution for averting the global collapse of the strongholds of biodiversity. Its buffering effects on biodiversity loss operate at very small spatial scales, are likely contingent on successional stage, and most effective in old-growth or high diversity secondary forests.</p>
Heterospecific pollen deposition is positively associated with reproductive success in a diverse hummingbird-pollinated plant community
<p>Heterospecific pollen deposition (HPD) is ubiquitous across plant communities, especially for generalized species which use a diversity of pollinators, and may have negative effects on plant reproduction. However, it is unclear whether temporal changes in the co-flowering community result in changes in HPD patterns. Moreover, community-level studies are required to understand which factors influence HPD and how the reproduction of different species is affected. We investigated the temporal variation of HPD, its relationship with level of specialization on pollinators and floral phenotypic specialization, and its association with reproductive success (pollen limitation and fruit set) in 31 hummingbird-pollinated plant species in a tropical Campo Rupestre. We found seasonality in HPD, with species flowering in the dry season having greater diversity of heterospecific pollen on stigmas and a higher frequency of stigmas containing heterospecific pollen, compared to the rainy season. Stigmas of ecologically generalized species had more heterospecific pollen, while the relationship for ecologically specialized species depended on floral phenotype. Surprisingly, and in contrast to theory, we found a positive relationship between HPD and reproductive success. Our results indicate benefits of generalization and facilitation, in which sharing pollinators brings greater reproductive success via increased conspecific pollen deposition, even if it incurs more HPD. We demonstrated how assessing HPD at a community-level can contribute to understanding the ecological causes and functional consequences of pollinator sharing.</p>
Data for: Light competition drives herbivore and nutrient effects on plant diversity
<p>Nutrient enrichment and loss of herbivores are assumed to cause plant diversity loss in grassland ecosystems because they increase plant cover that decreases understory light. Empirical tests of the role of competition for light in natural systems are based on indirect evidence and have contributed to strong debates over the last 40 years. Using illumination by LED-lamps, we demonstrate that experimentally restoring light to understory plants in a natural grassland mitigated the loss of plant diversity caused either by nutrient enrichment or the absence of mammalian herbivores. The initial effect of light addition on restoring diversity under fertilization was transitory and outweighed by the greater effect of herbivory on light levels, highlighting herbivory as a major factor controlling diversity, partly via light. Our results provide the first direct experimental demonstration in a natural system that competition for light is a major mechanism contributing to biodiversity loss under cessation of mammalian herbivory. Our results also demonstrate that herbivore effects can outpace fertilization effects on competition for light. Management practices that target maintaining grazing by native or domestic herbivores may have applied utility for protecting biodiversity in grassland ecosystems because they alleviate competition for light in the understory.</p>
Dataset from: Warming effects on grassland productivity depend on plant diversity
<p><b>Aim:</b> Climate warming and biodiversity loss both alter plant productivity, yet we lack an understanding of how biodiversity regulates the responses of ecosystems to warming. In this study, we examine how plant diversity regulates the responses of grassland productivity to experimental warming using meta-analytic techniques.</p> <p><b>Location:</b> Global</p> <p><b>Major taxa studied: </b>Grassland ecosystems</p> <p><b>Methods:</b> Our meta-analysis is based on warming responses of 40 different plant communities obtained from 20 independent studies on grasslands across five continents.</p> <p><b>Results: </b>Our results show that plant diversity and its responses to warming were the most important factors regulating the warming effects on plant productivity, among all the factors considered (plant diversity, climate and experimental settings). Specifically, warming increased plant productivity when plant diversity (indicated by effective number of species) in grasslands was lesser than 10, whereas warming decreased plant productivity when plant diversity was greater than 10. Moreover, the structural equation modelling showed that the magnitude of warming enhanced plant productivity by increasing the performance of dominant plant species in grasslands of diversity lesser than 10. The negative effects of warming on productivity in grasslands with plant diversity greater than 10 were partly explained by diversity-induced decline in plant dominance.</p> <p><b>Main Conclusions:</b> Our findings suggest that the positive or negative effect of warming on grassland productivity depends on how biodiverse a grassland is. This could mainly owe to differences in how warming may affect plant dominance and subsequent shifts in interspecific interactions in grasslands of different plant diversity levels.</p>
Space resource utilization of dominant species integrates abundance- and functional-based processes for better predictions of plant diversity dynamics
<p>Sustainable ecosystem management relies on our ability to predict changes in plant diversity and to understand the underlying mechanisms. Empirical evidence demonstrates that abundance- and functional-based processes simultaneously explain the loss of plant diversity in response to human activities. Recently, a novel indicator based on percent cover (CoverD) and maximum height (HeightD) of the dominant plant species – Space Resource Utilization (SRUD) – has proven to give robust and better predictions of plant diversity dynamics than community biomass. Whether the superior predictive ability of SRUD is due to its capacity to simultaneously capture abundance- and functional-based processes remains unknown. Here, we tested this hypothesis by quantifying mechanistic links between changes in SRUD and biodiversity in response to nutrients and herbivores. Furthermore, we assessed the relative contribution of dominant, intermediate, and rare species to reduced density of individuals by combining null model analysis with field experiments. We found that SRUD successfully captured changes in ground-level light availability and changes in the number of individuals to predict plant diversity dynamics, and each of CoverD and HeightD partly and independently contributed to both processes. Comparative results from null model analysis and field experiments confirmed that individual losses of dominant, intermediate, and rare species followed non-random processes. Specifically, compared with random loss process, rare species lost proportionally more individuals and thus disproportionately contributed to species loss, while dominant and intermediate species lost less. Our results demonstrate that SRUD captures both abundance- and functional-based processes thus explaining why SRUD provides more accurate predictions of changes in species diversity. Given that rare species can play an important role in shaping community structure, resisting against invasion, impacting higher trophic levels, and providing multiple ecosystem functions, reducing the SRU of dominant species could alleviate the risk of exclusion of rare species by mitigating abundance- and functional-based competition processes.</p>
Data from: Savanna resilience to droughts increases with proportion of browsing wild herbivores and plant functional diversity
<p><span>1. Maintaining the resilience and functionality of savannas is key to sustaining the ecosystem services they provide. This maintenance is largely dependent on the resilience of savannas to stressors, such as prolonged droughts. The resilience to drought is largely determined by the interaction of herbivores and the functional composition of vegetation. So far, our understanding and ability to predict the response of savannas to drought under different types of rangeland use and as a function of vegetation composition are still limited.</span></p> <p><span>2. In this study, we used the ecohydrological, spatially-explicit savanna model EcoHyD to determine if the resilience of a savanna rangeland towards prolonged droughts can be enhanced by the choice of rangeland use type (grazer-dominated, mixed-feeders or browser-dominated) and animal density. We evaluated the ability of a Namibian savanna system to withstand droughts and to recover from droughts based on its perennial grass cover and the overall species composition. </span></p> <p><span>3. Generally, we determined a low resilience under high grazer densities.</span> <span>Most importantly, we found that functional diversification of herbivores and plants acted as resilience insurance against droughts, leading to greater resistance and recovery of perennial grasses. In particular, a higher proportion of herbivores allowed for higher resilience, probably also due to a short-term switch to more drought-resistant or unpalatable species. </span></p> <p><span>4. In this case, herbivore diversification was of high self-regulatory value </span><span>by reestablishing trophic complexity</span><span>, reducing the need for additional management interventions. </span></p> <p><span>5. <strong>Synthesis and applications</strong></span><span><strong>. </strong>Savanna systems will be more resistant to drought if (i) a dense perennial grass cover is maintained, protecting the topsoil from heat-induced water losses and erosion, encompassing functionally important species that are particularly well adapted to water stress and that are palatable, if (ii) the grazing pressure is adjusted to the productivity of the system, and (iii) the herbivore community includes browsers. </span></p>
Datasets from: Local- and landscape-scale drivers of terrestrial herbaceous plant diversity along a tropical rainfall gradient in Western Ghats, India
<p>This data set contains information on local- and landscape-level terrestrial herbaceous plant diversity and critical abiotic factors along a 36-km East-West transect in Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, Tamil Nadu India. Understory angiosperms with no above-ground wood (secondary cambial growth) were considered as herbaceous plants.</p>
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Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.