Abstract

MUNOZ, François; ANTHELME, Fabien  and  RAEVEL, Valérie. Multi-scale ecological processes driving plant community dynamics in high-elevation peatlands of Bolivia. Ecología en Bolivia [online]. 2014, vol.49, n.3, pp.104-119. ISSN 1605-2528.

A few dominant cushion plant species dominate and determine the functioning and resilience of high-elevation peatlands of Andes (bofedales), in the face of climate change and glacier melting. We hypothesize that these foundation species strongly influence the abiotic and biotic environment of plant communities inhabiting the cushions. We developed a metacommunity framework to investigate the dynamics of communities associated with two dominant cushion species, Oxychloe andina (OA) and Distichia muscoides (DM). Based on both taxonomical and functional composition, we propose a framework to assess the relative influence of niche-based filtering in contrasting OA and DM environments, dispersal limitation and demographic stochasticity to community assembly. Niche-based processes were identified by analyzing functional trait variation within and between communities while we selected a minimal set of species relevant for this analysis. We propose a multiscale sampling to address the effect of dispersal limitation on the dynamics of these fragmented ecosystems. We assess the contribution of source-sink dynamics and demographic stochasticity by contrasting the distribution of scarce and abundant plants in OA and DM cushions. Then, we analyze and discuss the validity of the proposed framework based on preliminary results. While our basic assumption is that niche-based filtering basically contrast community dynamics in OA and DM cushions, some environmental covariates also influence secondarily community dynamics in OA cushions.

Keywords : Biotic interactions; Dispersal limitation; Functional traits; Metacommunity; Niche-based filtering.

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