Environmental filtering predicts plant-community trait distribution and diversity: Kettle holes as models of meta-community systems.

ABSTRACT: Meta-communities of habitat islands may be essential to maintain biodiversity in anthropogenic landscapes allowing rescue effects in local habitat patches. To understand the species-assembly mechanisms and dynamics of such ecosystems, it is important to test how local plant-community diversity and composition is affected by spatial isolation and hence by dispersal limitation and local environmental conditions acting as filters for local species sorting.We used a system of 46 small wetlands (kettle holes)-natural small-scale freshwater habitats rarely considered in nature conservation policies-embedded in an intensively managed agricultural matrix in northern Germany. We compared two types of kettle holes with distinct topographies (flat-sloped, ephemeral, frequently plowed kettle holes vs.

SUBMITTER: Lozada-Gobilard S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6392361 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature