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 oristic 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 ora signi cantly decreasing (−10.7%) and alien ora doubling (+132.1%) in richness. The species–area relationships demonstrated the scale-dependence of the observed changes for native and alien species. The observed oristic 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 a orestation processes and invasion by alien woody plants, signi cantly incresed. These results demonstrate the great power of oristic studies, often available in grey literature, for understanding long-term biotic changes in insular ecosystems.

Plant recording across two centuries reveals dramatic changes in species diversity of a Mediterranean archipelago / Alessandro, Chiarucci; Simone, Fattorini; Foggi, Bruno; Sara, Landi; Lazzaro, Lorenzo; János, Podani; Daniel, Simberloff. - In: SCIENTIFIC REPORTS. - ISSN 2045-2322. - STAMPA. - 7:(2017), pp. 1-11. [10.1038/s41598-017-05114-5]

Plant recording across two centuries reveals dramatic changes in species diversity of a Mediterranean archipelago.

Bruno Foggi
Data Curation
;
Lorenzo Lazzaro
Data Curation
;
2017

Abstract

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 oristic 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 ora signi cantly decreasing (−10.7%) and alien ora doubling (+132.1%) in richness. The species–area relationships demonstrated the scale-dependence of the observed changes for native and alien species. The observed oristic 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 a orestation processes and invasion by alien woody plants, signi cantly incresed. These results demonstrate the great power of oristic studies, often available in grey literature, for understanding long-term biotic changes in insular ecosystems.
2017
7
1
11
Alessandro, Chiarucci; Simone, Fattorini; Foggi, Bruno; Sara, Landi; Lazzaro, Lorenzo; János, Podani; Daniel, Simberloff
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Utilizza questo identificatore per citare o creare un link a questa risorsa: https://hdl.handle.net/2158/1101986
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