Nurse plants promote taxonomic and functional diversity in an arid Mediterranean annual plant community
Research in the last decades supports the idea that certain species, namely ‘nurse species’, can enhance ecosystem function and species diversity in their vicinity through amelioration of the abiotic environment. However, few studies have explored whether nurse plants can promote functional diversity at the microhabitat level. Here, we evaluated the hypothesis that nurse plants can increase functional diversity in the beneficiary annual plant assemblage at the microhabitat level. The study was carried out in the Sayeret Shaked Park, in the Negev desert (Israel). The nurse species examined, two shrubs and one large annual, had negligible or even negative influence on annual aboveground biomass production. Nonetheless, they increased functional diversity in terms of specific leaf area (SLA), maximum plant height (PH), seed mass (SM), and reproductive ratio (RR) at the microhabitat level. These findings reinforce the idea that, even if there is not a typical nurse syndrome related to enhanced plant performance, nurse plants might induce a portfolio effect on annual plant assemblages by promoting functional diversity in key functional traits associated to plant survival and reproduction under a set of different microhabitat conditions.
Madrigal-González J., Cano-Barbacil C., Kigel J., Ferrandis P. & Luzuriaga A. L. 2020. Nurse plants promote taxonomic and functional diversity in an arid Mediterranean annual plant community. Journal of Vegetation Science, 31 (4): 658-666. https://doi.org/10.1111/jvs.12876
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