Contemporary spatial and environmental factors determine vascular plant species richness on highly fragmented meadows in Central Finland
Raatikainen, K., Oldén, A., Käyhkö, N., Mönkkönen, M., & Halme, P. (2018). Contemporary spatial and environmental factors determine vascular plant species richness on highly fragmented meadows in Central Finland. Landscape Ecology, 33(12), 2169-2187. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-018-0731-z
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Landscape EcologyDate
2018Copyright
© The Author(s) 2018.
Context Habitat loss is a major threat to biodiversity.
It can create temporal lags in decline of species in
relation to destruction of habitat coverage. Plant
species specialized in semi-natural grasslands, especially
meadows, often express such extinction debt.
Objectives We studied habitat loss and fragmentation
of meadows and examined whether the changes in
meadow coverage had caused an extinction debt on
vascular plants. We also studied whether historical or
present landscape patterns or contemporary environmental
factors were more important determinants of
species occurrence.
Methods We surveyed the plant species assemblages
of 12 grazed and 12 mown meadows in Central
Finland and detected the meadow coverages from their
surroundings on two spatial scales and on three time
steps. We modelled the effects of functional connectivity,
habitat amount, and isolation on species richness
and community composition.
Results We observed drastic and dynamic meadow
loss in landscapes surrounding our study sites during
the last 150 years. However, we did not find explicit
evidence for an extinction debt in meadow plants. The
observed species richness correlated with contemporary
factors, whereas both contemporary factors and
habitat availability during the 1960s affected community
composition.
Conclusions Effective conservation management of
meadow biodiversity builds on accurate understanding
of the relative importance of past and present factors
on species assemblages. Both mown and grazed
meadows with high species richness need to be
managed in the future. The management effort should
preferably be targeted to sites located near to each
other.
...


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