Consequences for selected high-elevation butterflies and moths from the spread of Pinus mugo into the alpine zone in the High Sudetes Mountains.

Due to changes in the global climate, isolated alpine sites have become one of the most vulnerable habitats worldwide. The indigenous fauna in these habitats is threatened by an invasive species, dwarf pine (Pinus mugo), which is highly competitive and could be important in determining the composition of the invertebrate community. In this study, the association of species richness and abundance of butterflies with the extent of Pinus mugo cover at individual alpine sites was determined.

Disentangling community functional components in a litter-macrodetritivore model system reveals the predominance of the mass ratio hypothesis.

RECENT INVESTIGATIONS HAVE SHOWN THAT TWO COMPONENTS OF COMMUNITY TRAIT COMPOSITION ARE IMPORTANT FOR KEY ECOSYSTEM PROCESSES: (i) the community-weighted mean trait value (CWM), related to the mass ratio hypothesis and dominant trait values in the community, and (ii) functional diversity (FD), related to the complementarity hypothesis and the divergence of trait values. However, no experiments controlling for the inherent dependence between CWM and FD have been conducted so far. We used a novel experimental framework to disentangle the unique and shared effects of CWM and FD in a leaf litter-macrodetritivore model system.