TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schöpke, Benito
A1  - Heinze, Johannes
A1  - Pätzig, Marlene
A1  - Heinken, Thilo
T1  - Do dispersal traits of wetland plant species explain tolerance against isolation effects in naturally fragmented habitats?
JF  - Plant ecology : an international journal
N2  - The effects of habitat fragmentation and isolation on plant species richness have been verified for a wide range of anthropogenically fragmented habitats, but there is currently little information about their effects in naturally small and isolated habitats. We tested whether habitat area, heterogeneity, and isolation affect the richness of wetland vascular plant species in kettle holes, i.e., small glacially created wetlands, in an agricultural landscape of 1 km(2) in NE Germany. We compared fragmentation effects with those of forest fragments in the same landscape window. Since wetland and forest species might differ in their tolerance to isolation, and because isolation effects on plant species may be trait dependent, we asked which key life history traits might foster differences in isolation tolerance between wetland and forest plants. We recorded the flora and vegetation types in 83 isolated sites that contained 81 kettle holes and 25 forest fragments. Overall, the number of wetland species increased with increasing area and heterogeneity, i.e., the number of vegetation types, while area was not a surrogate for heterogeneity in these naturally fragmented systems. Isolation did not influence the number of wetland species but decreased the number of forest species. We also found that seeds of wetland species were on average lighter, more persistent and better adapted to epizoochory, e.g., by waterfowl, than seeds of forest species. Therefore, we suggest that wetland species are more tolerant to isolation than forest species due to their higher dispersal potential in space and time, which may counterbalance the negative effects of isolation.
KW  - Forest species
KW  - Habitat fragmentation
KW  - Isolation
KW  - Kettle holes
KW  - Life history traits
KW  - Wetland species
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-019-00955-8
SN  - 1385-0237
SN  - 1573-5052
VL  - 220
IS  - 9
SP  - 801
EP  - 815
PB  - Springer
CY  - Dordrecht
ER  -