News 2012

Microfragmentation concept is expanding and another building block in reevaluating somewhat sessile theories about the agents shaping biodiversity patterns is now published. Microfragmentation, that was mentioned and briefly discussed for the first time in Tamme et al 2010 paper has now grown into a young and promising concept. It already has a definition: "Microfragmentation is a community level process of changing habitat into a more heterogeneous environment that can have negative effects on the diversity through habitat loss and subsequent isolation." and the paper also delivers first supporting results from the simulations of virtual communities. Turns out that habitat heterogeneity might indeed have also negative and neutral effects on community diversity, not just positive, like indicated by basically all classical ecology theories. Hopefully this conceptual development continues and next results exploring microfragmentation will already come from the field or at least from the greenhouse.

Lauri Laanisto, Riin Tamme, Inga Hiiesalu, Robert Szava-Kovats, Antonio Gazol and Meelis Pärtel (2012) Microfragmentation concept explains non-positive environmental heterogeneity-diversity relationships. Oecologia. DOI: 10.1007/s00442-012-2398-5.
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March – May 2012 Riin Tamme visited Rey Juan Carlos University in Spain
[img_assist|nid=170|title=Riin with Semiarid Ecology and Global Change Lab|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=300|height=200]

PhD student Riin Tamme spent three months in sunny Spain visiting the Semiarid Ecology and Global Change Lab, led by professor Fernando Maestre. Prof. F. Maestre is one of the leading ecologists studying ecosystem functioning and has also worked extensively with environmental heterogeneity (Riin’s PhD topic). Riin had a chance to meet all the great people in the working group and the university, learn new techniques and methods while helping with field and laboratory work. Riin also collaborated with Prof. Fernando Maestre, the working group and Dr. Nicolas Gross and Dr. Yoann Le Bagousse-Pinquet from France. This visit was funded by ESF DoRa program activity 6.

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May 2012 DNA-based methods are likely to reveal new richness patterns

Meelis Pärtel and Inga Hiiesalu in collaboration with Maarja Öpik and Scott D Wilson published a review article in Functional Ecology. The article presents an overview of how the use of DNA-based techniques might alter our perception of richness patterns in plant communities. DNA-based measurements of belowground plant richness are likely to reveal that plant richness is greater below- than aboveground because many perennial plants persist belowground even in the temporary absence of aboveground shoots, and because the roots and rhizomes of plant individuals occupy
larger areas than do shoots. The authors hypothesized how belowground species richness might vary with increasing sample size and along a number of environmental gradients, such as productivity, disturbance and heterogeneity. Current DNA-based methods are likely to reveal patterns different from those well-documented for aboveground richness and may also produce new insights about plant community structure and function.

Pärtel, M., Hiiesalu, I., Öpik, M. & Wilson, S.D. (accepted) Belowground plant species richness: new insights from DNA-based methods. Functional Ecology.

[img_assist|nid=169|title= Who wouldn't want to do field work in Spain? |desc=|link=popup|align=right|width=380|height=220]May 2012 Field work in Spain

Researchers Jodi Price and Antonio Gazol, and PhD student Riin Tamme visited Navarra in northern Spain to collect data from species-rich grasslands. Navarra is located in the border between the mediterranean and the temperate region and is one of the hot spots of plant diversity in Spain with around 2600 plant species. Jodi is collecting data to understand community assembly processes in similar species-rich grasslands around the world. At the site, Jodi found a record number of species in her dataset with 23 vascular plant species in a 10 x 10 cm quadrat. Riin is also taking a global approach to understanding the relationship between small-scale heterogeneity and diversity. In Spain we collaborated with Ricardo Ibáñez and Jaime Uría from the Department of Plant Biology, University of Navarra. Ricardo was our plant id and grasslands expert, and Jaime assisted with many things including providing coffee, ice-creams and mum-made cake. See photos from the fieldwork.
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May 2012 How Estonian people perceive semi-natural landscapes?

In May, our workgroup had a visit by Dr. Martin Dallimer, a post-doctoral researcher from Denmark. Martin is carrying out a socioeconomic study to investigate how Estonian people value grasslands and semi-natural landscapes. Study will be carried out in three countries, Estonia, Poland and Denmark, and macroecology workgroup is collaborating on Estonian part of the study.

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May 2012 New method to test for biotic effects on community assembly

Jodi Price, Pille Gerhold and Meelis Pärtel [img_assist|nid=168|title=How are communities assembled?|desc=|link=popup|align=right|width=300|height=200]in collaboration with Francesco de Bello (first author) published a paper in Ecology introducing the ‘functional species pool framework’. In this paper they show that by taking into account the ‘dark diversity’ or absent species for a particular community enables a better understanding of the biotic processes governing community assembly. Commonly, increased functional similarity among co-existing species is attributed to habitat filters due to some common adaptation to the environment. However, biotic processes such as competition can also increase similarity among species if species bearing traits associated with low competitive ability are excluded. In the functional species pool framework, they propose a method which accounts for the effects of habitat filters and separates them from biotic filters. This is done by comparing the functional diversity of the species pool to the functional diversity in the community. They tested this method in simulations and in comparison with previous methods (randomisation approaches), found the new framework most consistently detected the simulated trait patterns. In field data they found different assembly processes operating depending on the communities (forests vs. grasslands) and traits considered.

de Bello, F., Price, J.N., Münkemüller, T., Liira, J., Zobel, M., Thuiller, W., Gerhold, P., Götzenberger, L., Lavergne, S., Lepš, J.,Zobel, K. and Pärtel, M. (2012) Functional species pool framework to test for biotic effects on community assembly. Ecology (in press).

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April 2012 Doctoral school held a contact seminar with the Environmental Board

Doctoral school of Earth Sciences [img_assist|nid=167|title=Coastal meadow in Haeska, Matsalu NP|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=300|height=200]and Ecology held a contact seminar with the Environmental Board in April. From our workgroup, PhD students Liis Kasari and Krista Takkis participated. The aim of the seminar was to exchange information between the scientists and the conservation biologists and enhance the cooperation between the parties. During the first day there were many interesting talks and discussions on possible cooperation projects. On the second day there was an excursion to the coastal meadows of Matsalu National Park and its visiting center in Penijõe Manor.
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March 2012 Review on The Plant List

Jesse Kalwij's review of 'The Plant List' was published in the Journal of Vegetation Science. In this review Jesse evaluates the advantages and limitations of The Plant List. This list is an online database aiming to be comprehensive for all described plant species names. The database's combination of being comprehensive, having a straight-forward web interface, and providing a easy-accessible download options makes it a valuable resource of information for a wide range of plant ecologists and taxonomists.

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March 2012 World records of plant species richness detected!

Which area on Earth is the most species rich? [img_assist|nid=165|title=Laelatu wooded meadow in Estonia holds small-scale world records in species richness.|desc=|link=popup|align=right|width=260|height=195] Many suggest instantly tropical rainforests but it is not that simple. There are world records in athletics for different running distances run by different athletes, so there might be multiple world records for species richness depending on the spatial scale. Meelis Pärtel together with J. Bastow Wilson (New Zealand), Robert K. Peet (USA) and Jürgen Dengler (Germany) published the first list of vascular plant species richness records from different sampling scales in the Journal of Vegetation Science. A plot of the maximum values against sample size in log-log scale showed a very close straight-line relationship. In areas above 50 m2 the records are indeed from tropical rainforests in South-America, but at smaller scales the records are from mown or grazed grasslands in Europe and Argentina, often ones over limestone (e.g. alvar grasslands in Sweden). Laelatu wooded meadow from Estonia holds the world record for scales 10x10 cm (25 species) and 20x20 cm (42 species). If biodiversity hotspots in rainforests can be protected by minimizing human influence, species-rich grasslands in Europe need immediate action from nature conservation agencies to continue and restore traditional land-use.

Wilson. J,B. Peet. R, Dengler. J, Pärtel. M, 2012. Plant species richness: the world records. Journal of Vegetation Science DOI: 10.1111/j.1654-1103.2012.01400.x

Reflections in media:
Science 335: 1423 News of the week. Grazed grasslands biodiverse, too.
National Geographic: Grasslands More Diverse Than Rain Forests — In Small Areas
ScienceShot: Grazed Grasslands Are Biodiversity Hot Spots
Wiley Press Room: European Grasslands Challenge Rainforests as the Most Species Rich Spaces on Earth

From blogosphere:
http://www.morganvegdynamics.blogspot.com/2012/03/world-record-plant-species-richness.html

Study was also covered in the flight magazine of our national airline Estonian Air:
http://www.botany.ut.ee/aveliina/files/Estonian_Air_magazine.pdf

[img_assist|nid=164|title=|desc=|link=popup|align=right|width=149|height=230]March 2012 Collaborative effort to estimate the status and trends of pollinators and insect-pollinated plants in Europe

Macroecology researcher Aveliina Helm participates in FP7 Collaborative project STEP - Status and Trends of European Pollinators. In the beginning of March, annual meeting of the project was held in Pisa, Italy. Project joins the researchers in many European universities to study the current status of pollinators and develop mitigation measures to halt pollinator loss.
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February 2012 Visit to Tallinn Technical University, Institute of Geology

Researchers and PhD students of macroecology workgroup visited the Department of Postglacial Geology in Tallinn Technical University. We got acquainted with the works of two research groups and planned future co-operation.
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February 2012 Plant traits that predict species susceptibility to local extinction

PhD student Liina Saar [img_assist|nid=162|title=Former alvar grassland replaced by a city|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=260|height=174]together with Krista Takkis, Meelis Pärtel and Aveliina Helm published a paper in Diversity and Distributions that focuses on the life-history traits of species disappearing from fragmented grasslands. Changes in landscape structure and environmental conditions have resulted in the local extinction of nearly 30% of the habitat specialist species form northern Estonian alvar grasslands. Species more prone to local extinction were characterized by a number of life-history traits - small size, light demand, greater number of seeds, larger terminal velocity etc. Thus, we are now able to say that in grasslands where the extinction debt is not yet paid, the most prone for future extinctions are small, light-demanding grassland species with good dispersal abilities, but poor abilities for local competition.
Saar, L., Takkis, K., Pärtel, M., Helm, A. (2012) Which plant traits predict species loss in calcareous grasslands with extinction debt? Diversity and Distributions. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1472-4642.2012.00885.x

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February 2012 Project on dark diversity launched in Czech Republic