Sacred natural sites (SNS) have gained recognition from conservationists, and are regarded as the oldest form of habitat protection in human history. Many case studies and literature reviews have ...been published on the subject. However, an updated and global-level synthesis on the effect of SNS on biodiversity conservation is still lacking. Here, we provide the first systematic review on SNS and biodiversity conservation, aiming to evaluate the effect of SNS across different: (i) continents; (ii) taxa; (iii) metrics. We checked 2750 papers and by applying inclusion criteria we selected 27 relevant papers. From these, we extracted descriptive data and 131 comparisons between SNS and Reference Sites. We applied vote-counting, multinomial and binomial post-hoc tests to the 131 comparisons. We found strong evidence that SNS have a positive effect on biodiversity, but also strong geographical and taxonomical biases, with most research focusing on Asia and Africa and on plants. We found that SNS have mainly positive effects on taxonomical diversity, vegetation structure and cultural uses of biodiversity. Our results strongly support the view that SNS have positive effects on biodiversity across continents and geographical settings, as found in a number of local studies and earlier overviews. These effects should be given official recognition in appropriate conservation frameworks, together with the specific forms of governance and management that characterize SNS. At the same time, further efforts are also required to fill the geographical and taxonomical gaps here highlighted, and to advancing our knowledge of SNS through more systematic research.
We explored the influence of climatic factors on diversity patterns of multiple taxa (lichens, bryophytes, and vascular plants) along a steep elevational gradient to predict communities' dynamics ...under future climate change scenarios in Mediterranean regions. We analysed (1) species richness patterns in terms of heat-adapted, intermediate, and cold-adapted species; (2) pairwise beta-diversity patterns, also accounting for its two different components, species replacement and richness difference; (3) the influence of climatic variables on species functional traits. Species richness is influenced by different factors between three taxonomic groups, while beta diversity differs mainly between plants and cryptogams. Functional traits are influenced by different factors in each taxonomic group. On the basis of our observations, poikilohydric cryptogams could be more impacted by climate change than vascular plants. However, contrasting species-climate and traits-climate relationships were also found between lichens and bryophytes suggesting that each group may be sensitive to different components of climate change. Our study supports the usefulness of a multi-taxon approach coupled with a species traits analysis to better unravel the response of terrestrial communities to climate change. This would be especially relevant for lichens and bryophytes, whose response to climate change is still poorly explored.
Italy is recognized as one of the prominent hot spot areas for plant diversity at regional and global scale, hosting a rich range of ecosystems and habitat types. This is especially true considering ...aquatic habitats, which represent a major portion of the total water surfaces in the Mediterranean region. Nevertheless, only a scant attention was paid to clarify the species richness of aquatic plant and its contribution to the total diversity at the country scale, despite such plants are seriously threatened at multiple scales. This paper provided the first comprehensive inventory of aquatic plants at the whole country scale, collecting data on species' distribution, trends, and explanatory determinants of species richness. We confirmed the key contribution of Italy to the regional and global aquatic plant diversity with a total of 279 species recorded since 2005, equal to the 88.5%, 55.9% and ∼10% of the richness estimated at European/Mediterranean, Palearctic and global scale, respectively. Ten species are considered extinct in the wild among which
L.,
(Bassi ex L.) Parl.,
(Jacq.) W.J.D. Koch, and
L., four were doubt among which
(L.) Raf.,
Hayne, and
R.W. Hartman., and eight were erroneously reported in the past, among which
L.,
Wartm., and
L. Only 18 species - mainly helophytes (14) - were present in all the 20 Italian regions, whereas hydrophytes showed most scanty regional frequencies. Temperature, latitude, area and water resources availability are the main drivers of aquatic plant spatial arrangement and diversity. Furthermore, the number of inhabitants per km
well described the number of "lost species" since 2000. The findings of the present survey call for an urgent elaboration of large-scale strategies to ensure the survival of aquatic plants, stressing on multiple functions played by aquatic plants in supporting national economy and human well-being. In this context, Italy can play a fundamental role guaranteeing temporary refuge for projected or expected species migrations along latitude and longitude gradients. Besides, in hyper-exploited landscapes man-made water bodies can further enhance the achievement of minimum conservation targets.
Soil erosion due to underground leakage is a major factor causing land degradation in karst regions. Rhizosphere effects (REs) on soil anti-erodibility (SAE) can alleviate this type of soil erosion ...by improving soil physical processes such as aggregate stability. However, the magnitudes and causes of interspecific variation in REs on SAE remain unclear. We tested the rhizosphere SAE indices of 42 key woody species distributed worldwide. Biologically active matter (BAM) and analogs of antibiotics (AOAs) that affect the SAE in rhizosphere soils were tested by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). We then used principal component analysis (PCA) and redundancy analysis (RA) to establish a spectrum of interspecific variability in the REs for the first time. The spectrum shows a gradient of change among species. Eleven species exerted negative REs on the SAE, while the remaining species showed positive effects along the spectrum. The species with large positive effects were mostly deciduous, which have high contents of both BAM and total organic matter and low contents of AOAs in their rhizosphere soil; compared with the other species tested, these species also have more leaves and roots and are better adapted to barren soils. The botanical characteristics of species with negative REs on the SAE differed from those with large positive effects. The contents of BAM in the rhizosphere accounted for 16-23% of the total variation in REs on the SAE. This study quantified interspecific variation in REs and identified root exudates with negative REs.
Accurate mapping of species distributions is a fundamental goal of modern biogeography, both for basic and applied purposes. This is commonly done by plotting known species occurrences, expert-drawn ...range maps or geographical estimations derived from species distribution models. However, all three kinds of maps are implicitly subject to uncertainty, due to the quality and bias of raw distributional data, the process of map building, and the dynamic nature of species distributions themselves. Here we review the main sources of uncertainty suggesting a code of good practices in order to minimize their effects. Specifically, we claim that uncertainty should be always explicitly taken into account and we propose the creation of maps of ignorance to provide information on where the mapped distributions are reliable and where they are uncertain.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Sacred natural sites (SNS) are instances of biocultural landscapes protected for spiritual motives. These sites frequently host important biological values in areas of Asia and Africa, where ...traditional resource management is still upheld by local communities. In contrast, the biodiversity value of SNS has hardly been quantitatively tested in Western contexts, where customs and traditions have relatively lost importance due to modernization and secularization. To assess whether SNS in Western contexts retain value for biodiversity, we studied plant species composition at 30 SNS in Central Italy and compared them with a paired set of similar but not sacred reference sites. We demonstrate that SNS are important for conserving stands of large trees and habitat heterogeneity across different land-cover types. Further, SNS harbor higher plant species richness and a more valuable plant species pool, and significantly contribute to diversity at the landscape scale. We suggest that these patterns are related not only to pie-existent features, but also to traditional management. Conservation of SNS should take into account these specificities, and their cultural as well as biological values, by supporting the continuation of traditional management practices.
The relationship between plant productivity and species richness is one of the most debated and important issues in ecology. Ecologists have found numerous forms of this relationship and its ...underlying processes. However, theories and proposed drivers have been insufficient to completely explain the observed variation in the forms of this relationship. Here, we developed and validated integration models capable of combining twenty positive or negative processes affecting the relationship. The integration models generated the classic humped, asymptotic, positive, negative and irregular forms and other intermediate forms of the relationship between plant richness and productivity. These forms were linked to one another and varied according to which was considered the dependent variable. The total strengths of the different positive and negative processes are the determinants of the forms of the relationship. Positive processes, such as resource availability and species pool effects, can offset the negative effects of disturbance and competition and change the relationship. This combination method clarifies the reasons for the diverse forms of the relationship and deepens our understanding of the interactions among processes.
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•We develop an adaptive monitoring approach, to estimate the coverage of habitat types using a two-phase sampling scheme.•The adaptive monitoring approach demonstrated high ...reliability in a simulation study performed on the whole country of Italy.•The method is cost effective, adaptable across habitat types, and transferable to other countries or whole European Union.
The quantitative assessment of habitat conservation status is a major task for European Union member states in compliance with Council Directive 92/43. One goal of the European 2030 Biodiversity Strategy is the effective management of habitats that show declining trends. While various approaches have been adopted for national assessments, there is no consensus on how to achieve common statistically sound estimates of the criteria indicated by the EU Directive for the evaluation of the status and trend of habitat types. Here, we present an adaptive monitoring approach based on a two-phase sampling scheme to estimate the coverage of EU terrestrial habitat types, which is one of the four criteria indicated by the Habitats Directive. We used 9 habitats distributed among different EU member states choosing Italy as a case study. The development of the methodological approach is described, and a simulation study was performed to check the precision of the coverage estimators accounting for the lack of sampled data (nonresponse treatment), subregions and sustainable sampling effort. We found that our two-phase sampling approach has the potential to increase precision in estimating the coverage of habitat types (approximated at 1 ha cell size) with respect to the precision achieved by simple random sampling without replacement, which is the simplest sampling approach. Adopting a small sampling fraction (⩽0.04%) of the survey area, the relative standard errors ranged from 7 to 15% for common habitats whose presence is strongly correlated with the habitat suitability scores furnished by an expert team. In the challenging context of a “mandated” monitoring type, our approach provides sound statistical estimates of habitat coverage with the possibility of applying a standardised and transferable sampling scheme that is easily repeatable over time.
Although islands are model systems for investigating assembly of biological communities, long-term changes in archipelago communities are not well understood because of the lack of reliable data. By ...using a vast amount of floristic data we assembled a dataset of the plant species occurring on 16 islands of the Tuscan Archipelago, Italy, across two periods, 1830-1950 and 1951-2015. We collected 10,892 occurrence records for 1,831 species. We found major changes in the island plant assemblages between the two periods, with native flora significantly decreasing (-10.7%) and alien flora doubling (+132.1%) in richness. The species-area relationships demonstrated the scale-dependence of the observed changes for native and alien species. The observed floristic changes were dependent on island area, with smaller islands displaying high variability in richness and compositional changes and larger islands having more stable species assemblages. The richness of species associated with open landscapes, that had been maintained for centuries by traditional practices, markedly reduced while the number of woody species, associated with afforestation processes and invasion by alien woody plants, significantly incresed. These results demonstrate the great power of floristic studies, often available in grey literature, for understanding long-term biotic changes in insular ecosystems.
The Webb’s hyacinth (
Bellevalia webbiana
Parl., Asparagaceae) is an Italian narrow endemic species, listed as Endangered (EN A2c) in the IUCN Global Red List of Threatened Species. The range of this ...bulbous perennial herb is restricted to two disjunct areas of Central Italy, separated by the mountain ridge of Northern Apennine. To evaluate the impact of climate change on this species, we used Ecological Niche Modelling (ENM) to predict future potential distribution under different scenarios, through Maximum entropy algorithm. The estimated potential distribution highlights the vulnerability of Webb’s hyacinth to the effects of climate change. The current potential Area Of Occupancy (AOO) (992 2×2 km cells) is forecast to dramatically decrease in the range 2041–2100, under the scenarios SSP3-7.0 (2070 = –249, 2100 = –682) and SSP5-8.5 (2070 = –372, 2100 = –948). In all future scenarios, the predicted potential distribution shifts towards higher elevations, located in the two main areas in which the species currently occurs. This could imply a loss of the current genetic differentiation documented at the population level. To overcome these problems, in addition to assisted colonization, an
ex situ
conservation programme should be planned.
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