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Short-term invasibility patterns in burnt and unburnt experimental Mediterranean grassland communities of varying diversities

  • Community Ecology
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Abstract

This paper reports the findings of a short-term natural invasibility field study in constructed Mediterranean herbaceous communities of varying diversities, under a fire treatment. Three components of invasibility, i.e. species richness, density and biomass of invaders, have been monitored in burnt and unburnt experimental plots with resident diversity ranging from monocultures to 18-species mixtures. In general, species richness, density and biomass of invaders decreased significantly with the increase of resident species richness. Furthermore, the density and biomass of invading species were significantly influenced by the species composition of resident communities. Although aboveground biomass, leaf area index, canopy height and percent bare ground of the resident communities explained a significant part of the variation in the success of invading species, these covariates did not fully explain the effects of resident species richness. Fire mainly influenced invasibility via soil nutrient levels. The effect of fire on observed invasibility patterns seems to be less important than the effects of resident species richness. Our results demonstrate the importance of species richness and composition in controlling the initial stages of plant invasions in Mediterranean grasslands but that there was a lack of interaction with the effects of fire disturbance.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all the people that helped with the weeding of the plots, T. Akriotis for the linguistic editing of the manuscript, B. Schmid for his advice in statistical analysis and continuous scientific support, T. Akriotis and three anonymous referees for their constructive comments on a previous version of the manuscript. This work was partially supported by EU-funded BIODEPTH project (ENV-CT95-0008).

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  1. Biodiversity Conservation Laboratory, Department of Environmental Studies, University of the Aegean, Mytilene, Lesbos, 81100, Greece

    Panayiotis G. Dimitrakopoulos, Alexandros Galanidis, Akis-Stavros D. Siamantziouras & Andreas Y. Troumbis

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  1. Panayiotis G. Dimitrakopoulos
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  2. Alexandros Galanidis
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  3. Akis-Stavros D. Siamantziouras
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Correspondence to Panayiotis G. Dimitrakopoulos.

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Dimitrakopoulos, P.G., Galanidis, A., Siamantziouras, AS.D. et al. Short-term invasibility patterns in burnt and unburnt experimental Mediterranean grassland communities of varying diversities. Oecologia 143, 428–437 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-004-1808-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-004-1808-8

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