List of plant species of the floodplain ecosystems of Khortytsia Island (Ukraine), their functional traits and indices of functional diversity, naturalness and hemeroby
Description
The investigation examines the potential of hemeroby as an indicator for assessing the impact of anthropogenic disasters on plant functional diversity. The functional structure of plant communities was analysed in the first year following the event, using Khortytsia Island (Ukraine) as a case study, which experienced significant environmental changes after the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam. The research identified 146 species of vascular plants and employed multivariate analysis, utilizing functional diversity indices and principal component analysis. The findings revealed that hemeroby is closely associated with changes in functional redundancy and evenness. Key trends include the formation of communities with high functional redundancy in disturbed areas and an increase in evenness due to the loss of dominant species. The spatial patterns of change indicate a complex interaction between human impacts and natural moisture gradients. The study underscores the significance of hemeroby as an effective indicator of ecological shifts in floodplain ecosystems.
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The research is based on materials from field studies conducted by the authors during the summer of 2024. The presence of all species of vascular plants in the herbaceous layer of the 4 × 4 m relevé plot at the centre of each sample site was recorded throughout the study period. The projected species cover of the herbaceous plants is expressed as a percentage. Plant taxonomy was based on the Euro+Med PlantBase (http://ww2.bgbm.org/EuroPlusMed). The following traits are considered as functional characteristics of plants: flower sexual syndrome [1], Raunkiær plant life-form [2] or climamorphes [3], pollenochores, diasporochores (ecobiochores) [4,5], competitor, stress tolerator, and ruderal (CSR) Grime’s strategies [6,7], Ellenberg indicator values (EIVs) [8,9], disturbance indicator values [10], naturalness [11], hemeroby [12,13], plant height, leaf area, specific leaf area, leaf thickness [1], leaf type [14], leaf water content per leaf dry mass [1], leaf nitrogen content per leaf dry mass, seed dry mass, seed number per plant, leaf carbon/nitrogen (C/N) ratio, flowering time [1], life span [1], dispersal distance class [15], growth form [14], mode of reproduction [14]. The calculation of distances between pairs of species based on functional traits for species collected in communities was conducted via the mFD package [16]. This study considered the following species and functional diversity indices (Supplement 2). Species richness (Sp_richn) [17], Gini-Simpson (GSimpson) [18], functional richness (Fric) [19], functional evenness (Feve) [20], functional divergence (Fdiv) [20], functional originality (Fori) [21], functional specialisation (Fspe) [22], functional dispersion (Fdis) [23], Rao’s quadratic entropy [24], functional redundancy (FunRed) [25], functional mean pairwise distance (Fmpd) [26], functional mean nearest neighbour distance (Fnnd) [27], functional identity (Fide) [28]. Gsimpson, FunRao, and FunRedundancy were calculated using the rao. diversity function from the SYNCSA package [29]. Indices of functional diversity should ideally encompass aspects of the community that extend beyond species richness, thereby effectively linking trait expression to functional performance [33]. The residuals derived from the linear regression comparing the diversity indices to the logarithm of species richness were utilised for further analyses. This method aimed to eliminate the variability in the functional diversity indices and the Simpson index resulting from differences in species richness. In essence, a transformation was applied: Itr = Iobs – k × log2Sp, where Itr is the transformed value of the index, Iobs denotes the observed value of the index, k signifies the slope of the regression line (assuming a regression model with a constant equal to zero), and Sp indicates the species richness within the community.
Institutions
- Melitopolcky derzhavny pedagogichny univercitet Bogdan Khmelnitsky