Filtros ambientais e atributos funcionais em vegetação de campo rupestre ferruginoso

Abstract

Functional traits can provide important clues for understanding the dynamics and structure of ecological communities. Here we tested the hypothesis that there is a co-structure between environmental parameters and the community composition of the shrub vegetation in ferruginous rupestrian grasslands. Additionally, we tested if there is a prevalence of the stress-tolerant strategy and traits that maximise resource conservation in the community. Through the evaluation of soil fertility, functional traits and ecological strategies, the environmental parameters were characterized, relating them to the composition of the community. A highly stress-tolerant vegetation was observed, with plants exhibiting stress-tolerance values between 72.6% and 100%, countering, ruderality was zero for all plants. We identify a strong co-structure between functional traits and soil fertility with community composition (RV = 0.45, p <0.001). Co-inertia axis 1 shows that some environmental parameters (e.g. leaf area, aluminum saturation, competitiveness, phosphorus and carbon content, stress-tolerance) influence the community of ferruginous rupestrian fields in a contrasting way. Areas with relatively less organic matter (i.e. carbon), less phosphorus and less acidity had a more competitive vegetation, with larger leaves and a larger specific leaf area, while areas with relatively more organic matter, more phosphorus and more acidity had more stress-tolerant vegetation with smaller leaves and smaller specific leaf area. This association of species with specific habitats in ferruginous rupestrian grasslands is potentially important for the restoration ecology, because it is noteworth that species were distributed in community according to soil characteristics and the functional traits of each area. Thus some species are potentially more suitable than others to restore areas of ferruginous rupestrian grasslands with different environmental parameters.