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Quantifying the effects of nutrient addition on the taxonomic distinctness of serpentine vegetation

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Abstract

Traditional diversity indices summarize the information about the relative abundances of species within a community without regard to differences between species. However, intuitively, a community composed of dissimilar taxa is more diverse than a community composed of more similar taxa. Therefore, useful indices of diversity should account for taxonomic relations among species. In this paper, a new parametric diversity index that combines species relative abundances and their taxonomic distinctiveness is used to quantify the way in which soil fertilization affects the diversity of a garigue community on ultramafic soils of Tuscany (central Italy). Results show that, while ultramafic soils generally host plant communities of limited taxonomic diversity with respect to similar communities on other substrates, fertilization significantly enhances the biomass production of species that are not exclusive to ultramafic soils. As a consequence, if diversity is measured combining species relative abundances with their taxonomic distinctiveness, nutrient addition tends to increase the diversity of ultramafic communities.

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Abbreviations

Pignatti (1982):

for most species

Chiarucci (2004):

for serpentine endemics and restricted taxa

Cronquist (1988):

for higher taxonomic levels.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Biology, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185, Rome, Italy

    Carlo Ricotta & Giancarlo Avena

  2. Department of Environmental Science ‘G. Sarfatti’, University of Siena, Via P.A. Mattioli 4, 53100, Siena, Italy

    Alessandro Chiarucci

Authors
  1. Carlo Ricotta
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  2. Giancarlo Avena
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  3. Alessandro Chiarucci
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Correspondence to Carlo Ricotta.

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Ricotta, C., Avena, G. & Chiarucci, A. Quantifying the effects of nutrient addition on the taxonomic distinctness of serpentine vegetation. Plant Ecol 179, 21–29 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-004-5521-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-004-5521-9

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