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Botanical Sciences
On-line version ISSN 2007-4476Print version ISSN 2007-4298
Abstract
AGUIRRE-JAIMES, Armando; LOPEZ-ACOSTA, Juan Carlos and DIRZO, Rodolfo. Tropical rainforest fragmentation affects plant species richness, composition and abundance depending on plant-size class and life history. Bot. sci [online]. 2021, vol.99, n.1, pp.92-103. Epub Feb 23, 2021. ISSN 2007-4476. https://doi.org/10.17129/botsci.2679.
Background:
Tropical rain forests have been impacted by land use change, leading to major deforestation and fragmentation. Understanding how fragmentation impacts plant communities is central for tropical conservation.
Questions:
i) How does species richness vary across a range of fragment sizes, and does it vary with plant size-structure? ii) how are species composition and floristic similarity affected by forest fragmentation? iii) does habitat fragmentation affect the representation of species with different life-history and regeneration patterns?
Studied species:
We sampled overall plant communities and calculated diversity metrics of mature-forest and light-demanding species, considering plants of different size-categories (defined by diameter at breast height, DBH).
Study site:
This study was carried out at Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz, Mexico, an area originally dominated by extensive evergreen tropical forest, but currently highly fragmented
Methods:
We sampled plants in five forest fragments representing (2 - 36 ha), a large patch of continuous forest (700 ha). Within each site we established ten-50 × 2 m transects and registered all woody plants with DBH > 1 cm.
Results:
Species richness declined as fragment size became. Such decline was significant considering all plants (DBH > 1.0 cm) but became non-significant as plant size-category increased (DBH > 2.5, or > 10 cm.). Small fragments had distinguishable assemblages compared to continuous forest and also a reduction in the representation of mature-forest species, compared to light-demanding species.
Conclusions:
Our findings confirm that fragmentation affects tropical plant species diversity, but the effect is differential, depending on plant size-category and life history.
Keywords : Plant diversity; floristic similarity; species richness decline; neotropical rain forest; plant regeneration strategies.