Vascular plant and epiphytic lichen communities in Canadian aspen parkland: scale-dependence of species-area relationships

Buckley, H.L. (2002) Vascular plant and epiphytic lichen communities in Canadian aspen parkland: scale-dependence of species-area relationships. Community Ecology, 3 (1). pp. 59-67. ISSN 1585-8553

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Abstract

Within-community species-area relationships were examined for vascular plants and epiphytic lichens on Populus spp within 100 treed patches in an area of less than 4 km in the aspen parkland of south-central Alberta, Canada. Both plants and lichens were sampled on three scales (patch-scale and two within-patch scales). This study is one of the few to demonstrate scale-dependent species-area relationships at a small scale and highlights the importance of multi-scale sampling in ecology. At the larger patch scale, the relationship between plant species richness and area was positive for both the full plant dataset and the forest habitat specialist subset. For lichens, the species-area relationships were positive at all scales. However, for plants, at small scales, the species-area relationship was negative for all plants, but non-significant for forest habitat specialist species when considered separately. This difference reflects the different mechanisms behind the species-area relationships for the two taxa. For vascular plants, small-scale species richness decreased with patch size due to an edge effect within patches. The species-area relationships for the forest habitat specialist species were unaffected by this edge effect because these species were more common in larger patches. The distribution of lichens within patches was not significantly different from random. Therefore, the positive species-area relationships observed for this taxon reflect a passive sampling effect; where there are more individuals, there are more species.

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