Plant functional traits in studies of vegetation changes in response to grazing and moving: towards a use of more specific traits

Title:

Plant functional traits in studies of vegetation changes in response to grazing and moving: towards a use of more specific traits
Funkční vlastnosti rostlin ve studiu vegetačních změn v důsledku změny obhospodařování pastvou a kosením

Creator:

Klimešová, Jitka, Latzel, Vít, de Bello, Francesco, and van Groenendael, Jan M.

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:42b8344f-4c6b-536d-a319-44505d9ef2aa
uuid:42b8344f-4c6b-536d-a319-44505d9ef2aa

Subject:

clonality, disturbance, grassland, management, persistance traits, phenology, and vegetative regeneration

Type:

article and TEXT

Description:

Plants’ abilities to function are difficult to evaluate directly in the field. Therefore, a number of attempts have been made to determine easily measurable surrogates – plant functional traits (PFTs). In particular, the value of PFTs as tools for predicting vegetation responses to management (i.e., grazing and mowing) is the focus of a large number of studies. However, recent studies using PFTs to predict the effect of pasture management in different regions did not give consistent predictions for the same set of PFTs. This lead to the suggestion that more specific traits better suited for a specific region be used in the future. We consider the identification of the most adaptative traits for surviving grazing and mowing in different biomes an important goal. Using temperate grasslands in Europe as an example, we show that (i) plant height, often considered as the best predictor of species response to grassland management, is coupled with other more relevant functional traits, and that (ii) clonal traits have important, often neglected functions in the response of species to grassland management. We conclude that single traits cannot be the only basis for predicting vegetation changes under pasture management and, therefore, a functional analysis of the trade-off between key traits is needed.

Language:

English

Rights:

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

Source:

Preslia | 2008 Volume:80 | Number:3

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false