Analysis and experimental validation of assembly rules of local plant communities basing on a competition-lottery model and using a functional trait approach (EuroDIVERSITY 040)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Peter Poschlod
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems
• Term: from 2006 to 2011
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 20498020

The main goal of this project is to understand the rules that govern the assembly of plant communities, based on functional traits related to dominance and lottery competition which are available via the database LEDA. We aim to test the hypothesis that species assembly is predictable in the general composition of functional groups, although it might be unpredictable in the specific composition in species. The project consists of two parts. In the first part, we aim to explain the entry of species into, persistence in and extinction from both stable and successional plant communities in terms of the traits of the invading species and of the resident community. We will analyse sequence effects in a long-term management experiment in grasslands running now 30 years (fallow experiments Baden-Wuerttemberg). Management treat - ments include succession, mulching twice per year, once per year, every second year and every third year, burning once per year and every second year and finally grazing or mowing which were the original land use types before the set-up of the experiment. In the second part, we want to validate experimentally assembly rules and sequence effects based on the analysis of the time-series by sowing species with certain functional trait combinations belonging to the regional species pool but not to the local community species pool. We suppose that in the plant communities of the different management treatments the probability of successful establishment of a species is the higher the more the functional trait combination of the introduced species resembles the trait combinations of the resident species of the disturbance stage.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants