Publications by authors named "G Bonari"
Article Synopsis
- Plant communities consist of species with varying functional traits and evolutionary backgrounds, leading to the expectation that functional diversity increases with phylogenetic diversity.* -
- Contrary to this expectation, a study of over 1.7 million vegetation plots showed that functional and phylogenetic diversity are weakly and negatively correlated, suggesting they operate independently.* -
- Phylogenetic diversity is more pronounced in forests and reflects recent climate, while functional diversity is influenced by both past and recent climate, highlighting the need to assess both types of diversity for ecosystem studies and conservation strategies.*
Increasing nitrogen depositions adversely affect European landscapes, including habitats within the Natura2000 network. Critical loads for nitrogen deposition have been established to quantify the loss of habitat quality. When the nitrogen deposition rises above a habitat-specific critical load, the quality of the focal habitat is expected to be negatively influenced.
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- Trait-based ecology traditionally focuses on broad axes of trait variation, but this study emphasizes the importance of intraspecific trait variability (ITV) in understanding plant adaptive strategies.
- By analyzing ITV across 167 species in various habitats in Italy, the research showed that ITV can rotate the axes of trait variation, enhance the variance explained by these axes, and influence the functional structure of trait space, albeit with small and context-dependent effects.
- The findings call for a careful approach in applying ITV patterns to different traits and environments, providing a framework to better integrate ITV into future trait space analyses.
Terrestrial ecosystems affect climate by reflecting solar irradiation, evaporative cooling, and carbon sequestration. Yet very little is known about how plant traits affect climate regulation processes (CRPs) in different habitat types. Here, we used linear and random forest models to relate the community-weighted mean and variance values of 19 plant traits (summarized into eight trait axes) to the climate-adjusted proportion of reflected solar irradiation, evapotranspiration, and net primary productivity across 36,630 grid cells at the European extent, classified into 10 types of forest, shrubland, and grassland habitats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMountain agroecosystems in Latin America provide multiple ecosystem functions (EFs) and products from global to local scales, particularly for the rural communities who depend on them. Agroforestry has been proposed as a climate-smart farming strategy throughout much of the region to help conserve biodiversity and enhance multiple EFs, especially in mountainous regions. However, large-scale synthesis on the potential of agroforestry across Latin America is lacking.
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