Biodiversity of dry grasslands in Armenia : first results from the 13th EDGG Field Workshop in Armenia

The 13th EDGG Field Workshop was conducted from the 26 June to 6 July 2019 in Armenia. The Field Workshop had two main aims: (a) to analyse the biodiversity patterns of the Armenian grasslands across multiple taxonomic groups and grain sizes, and (b) to study the syntaxonomic position of these grasslands in a general European context. We conducted our sampling in 16 sites that ensured good geographical coverage across the country. In total, we sampled 29 EDGG Biodiversity Plots (nested-plot series of 0.0001 to 100 m²) and 53 additional 10-m2 plots. Data of orthopteroid insects (Orthoptera and Mantodea) were recorded in 42 100-m² plots. We found mean total species richness values of the vegetation of 7.5 species in 0.01 m², 31.9 species in 1 m² and 51.3 species in 10 m². The richest grasslands for vascular plants were meso-xeric grasslands with up to 35 species in 0.1 m² and 80 in 10 m². Maximum orthopteroid rich-ness in 100 m² was 14. Syntaxonomically, the majority of stands appear to belong to the class Festuco-Brometea, with the orders Brachy-podietalia pinnati (meso-xeric), Festucetalia valesiacae (xeric, non-rocky) and an unknown order of rocky dry grasslands. By contrast, the thorn-cushion communities (probably Onobrychidetea cornutae), the scree communities and the dry grasslands of lower elevations rich in annuals and chamaephytes (probably largely Astragalo-Brometea), do not fit to any vegetation class described in Europe. We found two species new to Armenia – the moss Syntrichia papillosissima and the lichen Aspicilia hispida. Our data demonstrate that Armenia is one of the Palaearctic hotspots of fine grain plant diversity. Both diversity patterns and syntaxonomy warrant in-depth studies, which are now possible with our comprehensive dataset

The Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) in 2019–2020

This report summarizes the activities and achievements of the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) from July 2019 to December 2020. During this period, Covid-19 allowed only one live event, the 14th EDGG Field Workshop to the alpine vegetation of Switzerland, organised ad hoc as a replacement for the cancelled Field Workshop in the Ukrainian steppes. The cancelled Eurasian Grassland Conference in Spain found a partial replacement in “Talk Grasslands!”, a series of online talks during winter 2020/2021. EDGG’s own diamond open access periodical, Palaearctic Grasslands, is a novel combination of scientific journal, photo magazine and member newsletter. With five issues during the reporting time it contributed much to EDGG’s attractiveness. EDGG edited four Special Features in international journals (Tuexenia, Hacquetia, Flora) and contributed 13 chapters on grasslands and shrublands of the Palaearctic biogeographic realm to the Encyclopedia of the world’s biomes. EDGG’s vegetation-plot database GrassPlot with multi-scale and multi-taxon diversity data of grasslands and other open habitats of the Palaearctic is now integrated into the EDGG website with the GrassPlot Diversity Explorer

Think globally, measure locally: The MIREN standardized protocol for monitoring plant species distributions along elevation gradients

Climate change and other global change drivers threaten plant diversity in mountains worldwide. A widely documented response to such environmental modifications is for plant species to change their elevational ranges. Range shifts are often idiosyncratic and difficult to generalize, partly due to variation in sampling methods. There is thus a need for a standardized monitoring strategy that can be applied across mountain regions to assess distribution changes and community turnover of native and non-native plant species over space and time. Here, we present a conceptually intuitive and standardized protocol developed by the Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN) to systematically quantify global patterns of native and non-native species distributions along elevation gradients and shifts arising from interactive effects of climate change and human disturbance. Usually repeated every five years, surveys consist of 20 sample sites located at equal elevation increments along three replicate roads per sampling region. At each site, three plots extend from the side of a mountain road into surrounding natural vegetation. The protocol has been successfully used in 18 regions worldwide from 2007 to present. Analyses of one point in time already generated some salient results, and revealed region-specific elevational patterns of native plant species richness, but a globally consistent elevational decline in non-native species richness. Non-native plants were also more abundant directly adjacent to road edges, suggesting that disturbed roadsides serve as a vector for invasions into mountains. From the upcoming analyses of time series, even more exciting results can be expected, especially about range shifts. Implementing the protocol in more mountain regions globally would help to generate a more complete picture of how global change alters species distributions. This would inform conservation policy in mountain ecosystems, where some conservation policies remain poorly implemented.EEA BarilocheFil: Haider, Sylvia. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research; AlemaniaFil: Haider, Sylvia. Martin Luther University. Institute of Biology. Geobotany and Botanical Garden; AlemaniaFil: Lembrechts, Jonas Johan. University of Antwerp. Centre of Excellence Plants and Ecosystems (PLECO); BélgicaFil: McDougall, Keith. Department of Planning, Industry and Environment; AustraliaFil: Pauchard, Aníbal. Universidad de Concepción. Facultad de Ciencias Forestales. Laboratorio de Invasiones Biológicas; ChileFil: Pauchard, Aníbal. Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB); ChileFil: Alexander, Jake M. Institute of Integrative Biology; SuizaFil: Barros, Agustina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico. Instituto Argentino de Nivología y Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales (IANIGLA); ArgentinaFil: Cavieres, Lohengrin A. Universidad de Concepción. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Oceanográficas. Departamento de Botánica; ChileFil: Cavieres, Lohengrin A. Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB); ChileFil: Rashid, Irfan. University of Kashmir. Department of Botany; IndiaFil: Rew, Lisa J. Montana State University. Department of Land Resource and Environmental Sciences; Estados UnidosFil: Aleksanyan, Alla. Institute of Botany aft. A.L. Takhtajyan NAS RA. Department of Geobotany and Plant Ecophysiology; ArmeniaFil: Aleksanyan, Alla. Armenian National Agrarian University. Chair of Biology and Biotechnologies; ArmeniaFil: Dimarco, Romina Daniela. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones Forestales y Agropecuarias Bariloche. Grupo de Ecología de Poblaciones de Insectos; ArgentinaFil: Dimarco, Romina Daniela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Forestales y Agropecuarias Bariloche. Grupo de Ecología de Poblaciones de Insectos; ArgentinaFil: Dimarco, Romina Daniela. University of Houston. Department of Biology and Biochemistry; Estados UnidosFil: Seipel, Tim. Montana State University. Department of Land Resource and Environmental Sciences; Estados Unido

Explaining variability in the production of seed and allergenic pollen by invasive Ambrosia artemisiifolia across Europe

To better manage invasive populations, it is vital to understand the environmental drivers underlying spatial variation in demographic performance of invasive individuals and populations. The invasive common ragweed, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, has severe adverse effects on agriculture and human health, due to its vast production of seeds and allergenic pollen. Here, we identify the scale and nature of environmental factors driving individual performance of A. artemisiifolia, and assess their relative importance. We studied 39 populations across the European continent, covering different climatic and habitat conditions. We found that plant size is the most important determinant in variation of per-capita seed and pollen production. Using plant volume as a measure of individual performance, we found that the local environment (i.e. the site) is far more influential for plant volume (explaining 25% of all spatial variation) than geographic position (regional level; 8%) or the neighbouring vegetation (at the plot level; 4%). An overall model including environmental factors at all scales performed better (27%), including the weather (bigger plants in warm and wet conditions), soil type (smaller plants on soils with more sand), and highlighting the negative effects of altitude, neighbouring vegetation and bare soil. Pollen and seed densities varied more than 200-fold between sites, with highest estimates in Croatia, Romania and Hungary. Pollen densities were highest on arable fields, while highest seed densities were found along infrastructure, both significantly higher than on ruderal sites. We discuss implications of these findings for the spatial scale of management interventions against A. artemisiifolia

The global naturalized Alien Flora (GloNAF) database

This dataset provides the Global Naturalized Alien Flora (GloNAF) database, ver-sion 1.2. Glo NAF represents a data compendium on th e occurrence and identit y of naturalizedalien vascular plant taxa across geographic regions (e.g. countries, states, provinces, districts,islands) around the globe. The dataset includes 13,939 taxa and covers 1,029 regions (including381 islands). The dataset is based on 210 data sources. For each ta x on-b y-region combination, wepr ovide information on whether the tax on is consider ed to be naturalized in the specific region(i.e. has established self-sustaining popula tions in the wild). Non-native taxa are marked as“alien”, when it is not clear whether they are naturalized. To facilitate alignment with other plantdatabases, we pro v ide f or each taxon the name as given in the original data source and the stan-dardized taxon and family names used by The Plant List Version 1.1 (http://www.theplantlist.org/). We pro vide an ESRI shapefile including polygons f or each region and informa tion on whetherit is an island or a mainland region, the country and the Taxonomic Databases Working Group(TDWG) regions it is part of (TDWG levels 1–4). We also provide several variables that can beused to filter the data according to quality and completeness of alien taxon lists, which varyamong the combinations of regions and da ta sources. A pre vious version of the GloNAF dataset(version 1.1) has already been used in several studies on, for example, historical spatial flows oftaxa between continents and geographical patterns and determinants of naturalization across dif-ferent taxonomic groups. We intend the updated and expanded GloNAF version presented hereto be a global resource useful for studying plant inv asions and changes in biodiversity from regio-nal to global scales. We release these data into the public domain under a Crea ti ve CommonsZer o license waiver (https://creati v ecommons.org/share-y our -work/public-domain/cc0/). Wheny ou use the da ta in your publication, we request that y ou cite this da ta paper. If GloN AF is amajor part of the data analyzed in your study, you should consider inviting the GloNAF coreteam (see Metadata S1: Originators in the Overall project description) as collaborators. If youplan to use the GloNAF dataset, we encourage y ou to contact the GloNAF core team to checkwhether there have been recent updates of the dataset, and whether similar analyses are already ongoing

Think globally, measure locally: The MIREN standardized protocol for monitoring plant species distributions along elevation gradients

Climate change and other global change drivers threaten plant diversity in mountains worldwide. A widely documented response to such environmental modifications is for plant species to change their elevational ranges. Range shifts are often idiosyncratic and difficult to generalize, partly due to variation in sampling methods. There is thus a need for a standardized monitoring strategy that can be applied across mountain regions to assess distribution changes and community turnover of native and non-native plant species over space and time. Here, we present a conceptually intuitive and standardized protocol developed by the Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN) to systematically quantify global patterns of native and non-native species distributions along elevation gradients and shifts arising from interactive effects of climate change and human disturbance. Usually repeated every five years, surveys consist of 20 sample sites located at equal elevation increments along three replicate roads per sampling region. At each site, three plots extend from the side of a mountain road into surrounding natural vegetation. The protocol has been successfully used in 18 regions worldwide from 2007 to present. Analyses of one point in time already generated some salient results, and revealed region-specific elevational patterns of native plant species richness, but a globally consistent elevational decline in non-native species richness. Non-native plants were also more abundant directly adjacent to road edges, suggesting that disturbed roadsides serve as a vector for invasions into mountains. From the upcoming analyses of time series, even more exciting results can be expected, especially about range shifts. Implementing the protocol in more mountain regions globally would help to generate a more complete picture of how global change alters species distributions. This would inform conservation policy in mountain ecosystems, where some conservation policies remain poorly implemented

Reading tea leaves worldwide: Decoupled drivers of initial litter decomposition mass-loss rate and stabilization

The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large-scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization factors of plant-derived carbon, using the Tea Bag Index (TBI). The stabilization factor quantifies the degree to which easy-to-degrade components accumulate during early-stage decomposition (e.g. by environmental limitations). However, agriculture and an interaction between moisture and temperature led to a decoupling between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization, notably in colder locations. Using TBI improved mass-loss estimates of natural litter compared to models that ignored stabilization. Ignoring the transformation of dead plant material to more recalcitrant substances during early-stage decomposition, and the environmental control of this transformation, could overestimate carbon losses during early decomposition in carbon cycle models

Reading tea leaves worldwide: decoupled drivers of initial litter decomposition mass‐loss rate and stabilization

The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large‐scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass‐loss rates and stabilization factors of plant‐derived carbon, using the Tea Bag Index (TBI). The stabilization factor quantifies the degree to which easy‐to‐degrade components accumulate during early‐stage decomposition (e.g. by environmental limitations). However, agriculture and an interaction between moisture and temperature led to a decoupling between initial mass‐loss rates and stabilization, notably in colder locations. Using TBI improved mass‐loss estimates of natural litter compared to models that ignored stabilization. Ignoring the transformation of dead plant material to more recalcitrant substances during early‐stage decomposition, and the environmental control of this transformation, could overestimate carbon losses during early decomposition in carbon cycle models

The Eurasian Dry Grassland Group – conserving grassland habitats in the Palaearctic region

Grassland ecosystems of Europe comprise a variety of mostly semi-natural habitats, which have developed over long periods of traditional land-use regimes, such as grazing and mowing, and they support a remarkable level of biodiversity. At some scales, the species diversity of these habitats is greater than that of tropical rain forests. Such valuable habitats are currently facing several threats, some natural but mostly anthropogenic, and many of them are threatened with extinction. The Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG, www.eddg.org) was established in 2008 by scientists, conservationists and others who are involved in the study and conservation of grassland habitats. The organization currently has 1299 members from a total of 64 countries. Since 2004, the EDGG has organized an annual scientific conference in different parts of Europe. Since 2009, the EDGG has also organized international field workshops to collect diversity data on the plant species composition of dry grasslands and related communities in understudied regions of the Palaearctic. These data are collated in the GrassPlot database and used as a resource for collaborative research. We hope to expand this initiative to also include data on arthropod taxa. The next EDGG conference will be held in Bilbao in 2020