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Woody species richness and turnover in expanding Mediterranean forests: a story of landscape legacies influenced by climatic aridity

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Abstract

Context

The current expansion of forests in Europe is expected to be affected by transient colonization credits (i.e. species deficits compared to long-established forests), especially due to plant species with limited dispersal ability.

Objectives

We aimed to disentangle the role of forest connectivity and climatic aridity in the assembly of woody plant communities present in expanding Mediterranean forests by studying species with different types of dispersal.

Methods

We used a space-for-time approach in recent (post 1980), middle-aged (1956–1980) and long-established forests (pre-1956) along an aridity and forest connectivity gradient in NE Spain. We recorded woody canopy and understory species and classified them as either vertebrate-, non-vertebrate- or human-dispersed species (i.e., crops).

Results

Species turnover between forests of different ages was limited to particular species and did not give rise to colonization credits determined by plant dispersal type. Connectivity and aridity drove understory richness in a similar way in forests of different ages. Within this general pattern, non-vertebrate-dispersed species were especially promoted by benign conditions. Sites with high forest connectivity had either the richest or the most impoverished understories given, respectively, low or high aridity. Thus, the rescue effect was modulated by aridity, which acted as a limiting factor.

Conclusions

Mediterranean forest richness and composition are strongly dependent on climatic constraints and the ‘rescue effects’ (connectivity) originating in surrounding forest areas. These two factors shape the composition of expanding forests in different ways depending on the ability of species to disperse.

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Data availability

Data is available in https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14343362.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Enrique Álvarez, Marta Ramírez and Carles Pérez for their assistance with the field- and laboratory work. We are indebted to Dr. Roberto Molowny-Horas for his advice and help during the implementation of the statistical analysis. We appreciate the comments of one anonymous reviewer that invited us to reconsider some of our ideas and clearly helped to improve the manuscript. This study was supported by the NEWFORLAND (RTI2018-099397-B-C22 MCIU/AEI/ERDF, EU) and the EU ERA-NET BiodivERsA SPONFOREST (APCIN_2016_0174) projects. VCA was supported by the postdoctoral Real Colegio Complutense Fellowship during the last publication steps. The icons used in Fig. 5 were designed by Laymik, Veremeya, Alice Noir, Cono Studio Milano, Trevor Mowry and Sophie (The Noun Project).

Funding

This study was supported by the NEWFORLAND (RTI2018-099397-B-C22 MCIU/AEI/ERDF, EU) and the EU ERA-NET BiodivERsA SPONFOREST (APCIN_2016_0174) projects.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CREAF, E08193, Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès), Catalonia, Spain

    Verónica Cruz-Alonso, Josep Maria Espelta & Joan Pino

  2. Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Verónica Cruz-Alonso

  3. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, E08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès), Catalonia, Spain

    Josep Maria Espelta & Joan Pino

Authors
  1. Verónica Cruz-Alonso
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  2. Josep Maria Espelta
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  3. Joan Pino
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JP and JME conceived the initial ideas and designed the field work. VCA analyzed the data and lead the writing of the manuscript. All authors contributed critically to the ideas discussed in this study.

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Correspondence to Verónica Cruz-Alonso.

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Cruz-Alonso, V., Espelta, J.M. & Pino, J. Woody species richness and turnover in expanding Mediterranean forests: a story of landscape legacies influenced by climatic aridity. Landscape Ecol 36, 1787–1800 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-021-01249-z

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