Relationships of community diversity with distributions of rare species, non-native plants, and compositional stability in a temperate forest–open habitat landscape

Abella, Scott R. and Menard, Karen S. and Schetter, Timothy A. and Walters, Timothy L. (2023) Relationships of community diversity with distributions of rare species, non-native plants, and compositional stability in a temperate forest–open habitat landscape. COMMUNITY ECOLOGY, 24 (1). pp. 21-33. ISSN 1585-8553 (print); 1588-2756 (online)

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Abstract

Three hypotheses regarding relationships between community diversity and occurrences of rare and non-native species and community stability include: (1) diverse communities contain the greatest numbers of rare species, (2) hotspots of native species richness and abundance also support many non-native species, and (3) community diversity promotes stability. We explored these hypotheses by sampling plant communities during two years (2018, 2021) in 151, 0.05-ha plots across a landscape of temperate forests and open habitats (e.g., prairies) in Ohio, USA. Occurrence of rare plant species corresponded with the most species-rich and diverse (Shannon diversity index) communities in one or both study years. Species richness of native and non-native plants was positively associated both years but cover was not. Stability of species composition between 2018 and 2021 was unrelated to 2018 species richness and was negatively related to community diversity and evenness. The most diverse sites were not the most compositionally stable. Although statistically significant relationships occurred between community diversity measures and rare and non-native species distributions and community compositional stabil- ity, the relationships were often weak or mainly only evident at the extremes. Moreover, variance partitioning indicated that occurrences of rare and non-native species and community compositional stability were more closely associated with loca- tion effects within the landscape and community type than they were to community diversity. Nevertheless, when especially high or low, community diversity measures may facilitate predicting levels of other community components of conservation priority, such as rare species occurrences.

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