Article
Version 1
Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
Plant Functional Traits of Plants Species Colonizing Forest Gaps
Version 1
: Received: 30 June 2023 / Approved: 3 July 2023 / Online: 3 July 2023 (11:29:23 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Ravnjak, B.; Bavcon, J.; Čarni, A. Plant Functional Traits of Plants Species Colonizing Forest Gaps. Diversity 2023, 15, 973. Ravnjak, B.; Bavcon, J.; Čarni, A. Plant Functional Traits of Plants Species Colonizing Forest Gaps. Diversity 2023, 15, 973.
Abstract
In the research, we studied the typical functional plant traits and life forms of plants that colonize forest gaps. In the research, we analysed functional plant traits of plant species growing on five forest gaps in the Dinaric fir-beech forest in Slovenia. The forest gaps were created as a result of natural disturbances. We selected 18 functional plant traits, whose values were obtained from the BiolFlor database. With the help of the JUICE program, we calculated the frequency of its occurrence on individual forest gap for each functional plant trait. Then we calculated Sperman's correlation coefficient at p<0.05, between the occurrence of individual functional plant traits and single forest gap. We found out that forest gaps are mainly colonized by perennials and herbaceous perennials and hamephytes. These are plant species that begin to flower in June and July, bloom for two or three months and are pollinated by insects, mainly hover flys and wild bees. Characteristic of colonizing plant species is also that, in addition to reproducing by seeds and spores, they also reproduce vegetatively. Besides that, birds and forest mammals are the vectors of fruit and seed dispersal of colonizing plant species.
Keywords
plant functional traits; forest gaps; colonizing plants; Dinaric fir-beech forest
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Comments (0)
We encourage comments and feedback from a broad range of readers. See criteria for comments and our Diversity statement.
Leave a public commentSend a private comment to the author(s)
* All users must log in before leaving a comment
