Edy Fantinato

Ca' Foscari University of Venice | UNIVE · Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics

We introduce the database of European vascular plant red lists, a compilation of red list categories designated to taxa during in-country conservation assessments. Version 1.0 of the database is a standalone static dataset with open access in an end-user friendly format. Its aim is to fulfil the objectives of European Cooperation in Science and Tec...

Questions Semi‐natural grasslands in Southern Europe are biodiversity hotspots, yet their patterns of plant species richness are less studied than in Central Europe. In the Central Apennines (Italy), there are large areas of dry calcareous grasslands, across a steep gradient of mean annual precipitation (from 650 to 1350 mm within c. 30 km). We ask...

The process of urbanisation is an important driver of landscape transformation, with multiple cascading effects on biodiversity. Recently, it has been hypothesised that urban sprawl in an intensive agricultural landscape may have positive effects on pollinator richness and pollination interactions, possibly due to an increase in habitat and resourc...

In the debate on the impact of urbanisation on biodiversity, two characteristics of urbanisation have been identified that mainly determine the extent of the impact, namely the level of urbanisation and the landscape context. More recently, it has been theorised that urban sprawl in an intensive agricultural landscape has a positive influence on po...

The diversity of vascular plant taxa in Europe is threatened. National red lists are valuable biodiversity conservation tools that provide us with information on the proximity of a taxon to extinction. However, there are still differences in the methods and implementation of these assessments across European countries, indicating gaps in conservati...

Flower strips are a fundamental part of agri-environment schemes in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Although vegetation is central for many arthropod groups, a few studies have evaluated the effects of flower strip structural and functional attributes on arthropod communities. In this study, we explored the relationship between flower strip a...

The European vascular flora consists of more than 20,000 species and represents 5.7% of global diversity. However, 44.9% of these species are vulnerable within Europe almost matching the global level prediction for extinction risk. One of the main aims of plant conservation, especially at country level, is to evaluate the extinction risk of each ta...

The diversity of vascular plants in Europe is at risk, and the national Red Lists are crucial for understanding these threats. However, our study has shown that there are differences in how European countries assess and update these documents, revealing gaps in conservation efforts. We collected data from the most recent national Red Lists of vascu...

Coastal dune systems around the world have been severely degraded by human activities, especially in the last century. This has resulted in severe structural and functional damage to these dynamic yet fragile transitional ecosystems and a net loss of important ecosystem services, especially in the face of climate change threats. The implementation...

Succession following the abandonment of traditional management practices can pose severe consequences for the conservation of semi-natural dry grassland communities. In the present study, we investigated whether the quantity of floral resources changes during succession of semi-natural dry grasslands and how this is related to pollinator richness a...

Long term survival of plant populations relies on successful reproductive cycle to obtain generation turnover. Focusing on plant species of conservation concern, we brought together a group of plant conservationists from different countries to assess whether the already available information on plant reproductive biology and autecology is adequate...

Evidence of the effects of alien plant colonisation on plant communities is often hindered by the fact that similar patterns in community composition can arise through a variety of processes. The objective of this study is to determine whether changes in species composition in coastal dune communities depend on the colonisation of a neophyte plant,...

The growth-survival trade-off has been extensively documented for phanerophyte species, whereas there is little evidence for non-phanerophyte species. However, information on the growth-survival trade-offs in non-phanerophyte species could be of great use in non-forested open ecosystem restoration by providing insights for plant production and tran...

Invasive alien plants (IAP) pose a major threat to biodiversity and have a negative impact on the integrity and conservation status of plant communities. Mediterranean dunes are widely exposed to IAP, due to their environmental heterogeneity and the anthropogenic pressures to which they are subjected. The current study explored the possible existen...

Intrinsic complexity of real-world systems makes particularly difficult to decipher which factors influence the dispersal of pollinators in the landscape matrix and their distribution among patches of suitable habitat. Saltmarshes are an ideal and naturally simplified landscape to study the ability of different groups of pollinators to disperse acr...

Coastal dune vegetation has been proved to contribute to several crucial ecosystem services, as coastal protection, water purification, recreation; conversely, its capacity to regulate the concentration of greenhouse gases received less attention. To fill this gap, the present work focalized on the assessment of the contribution of coastal dune her...

Il manuale si colloca nell’ambito dei progetti LIFE17 NAT/IT/000565 CALLIOPE (Coastal dune hAbitats, subLittoraL sandbanks, marine reefs: cOnservation, Protection, and thrEats Mitigation) e LIFE16 NAT/IT/000589 REDUNE - (REstoration of DUNE habitats in Natura 2000 sites of the Veneto coast) e come capitalizzazione delle azioni del progetto LIFE1...

With the aim to identify future challenges and opportunities in vegetation science, we brought together a group of 22 early-career vegetation scientists from diverse backgrounds to perform a horizon scan. In this contribution, we present a selection of 15 topics that were ranked by participants as the most emergent and impactful for vegetation scie...

A fundamental question in community ecology is how the quantity of floral resources affects pollinator activity and how this relates to the structure and robustness of pollination networks. The issue has been mainly addressed at the species level, while at the community level several questions are still open. Using a species‐rich semi‐natural grass...

The feasibility and efficacy of soft engineering foredune restoration approaches still lack insight from research and monitoring activities, especially in areas where dunes are under persisting human disturbance. We evaluated the efficacy of Mediterra-nean foredune restoration in dune areas freely accessible to tourists. Foredunes were reconstructe...

Aim Humans influence species distributions by modifying the environment and by dispersing species beyond their natural ranges. Populations of species that have established in disjunct regions of the world may exhibit trait differentiation from native populations due to founder effects and adaptations to selection pressures in each distributional re...

Habitat monitoring in Europe is regulated by Article 17 of the Habitats Directive, which suggests the use of typical species to assess habitat conservation status. Yet, the Directive uses the term “typical” species but does not provide a definition, either for its use in reporting or for its use in impact assessments. To address the issue, an onlin...

Questions: Which environmental factors influence fine-grain beta diversity of vegetation and do they vary among taxonomic groups? Location: Palaearctic biogeographic realm. Methods: We extracted 4,654 nested-plot series with at least four different grain sizes between 0.0001 m² and 1,024 m² from the GrassPlot database, covering a wide range of di...

Conceptual figure summarizing our hypotheses how different drivers could influence fine-grain β-diversity via changing mean occupancy of species, based on the findings of our study and theoretical considerations. Fine-grain β-diversity (and likewise for larger grain sizes) is mathematically linked to mean occupancy, which can be decomposed into (i)...

Invasive alien species risk assessment and adaptive management are often hindered by a lack of information for most species. This work aims at predicting the probability of successful establishment and invasion of Oenothera stucchii Soldano, a neophyte invasive species belonging to the sect. Oenothera subsect. Oenothera, in xerophilous grasslands o...

Trait-based studies have become extremely common in plant ecology. In this work we analysed intraspecific trait variation of Himantoglossum adriaticum , a European endemic orchid species of Community interest, to investigate whether different populations growing on managed and abandoned semi-natural dry grasslands show differences in the CSR strate...

Question The early phases in the life cycle of a plant are the bottleneck for successful species establishment thereby affecting population dynamics and distribution. In coastal environments, the spatial pattern of plant communities (i.e. vegetation zonation) follows the ecological gradient of abiotic stress changing with the distance from the sea....

Aim: Species-area relationships (SARs) are fundamental scaling laws in ecology although their shape is still disputed. At larger areas power laws best represent SARs. Yet, it remains unclear whether SARs follow other shapes at finer spatial grains in continuous vegetation. We asked which function describes SARs best at small grains and explored how...

Among the wide variety of biotic interactions, animal-mediated pollination plays a crucial role in the maintenance of the integrity of plant communities. Thus, there is increasing concern about the possible effects that the growing loss of pollinators (i.e., pollinator crisis phenomenon) might have on plant communities. Recent studies revealed that...

Coastal dune ecosystems are increasingly threatened by the mass tourism phenomenon. Intense concentration of human activities and mass tourism are leading to coastal dune loss and fragmentation. Besides the loss and fragmentation of coastal dunes, mass tourism has considerably affected remnant natural areas. To prevent degradation of remnant natura...

High heterogeneity of grassland communities supports a high diversity of species and represents a key point for the retention of pollinators in agricultural landscapes. In the present study, we explored whether the co-occurrence of different grassland communities has any effect on the stability of the network of pollination interactions. We monitor...

The declining native orchid Himantoglossum adriaticum H. Baumann is a European endemic of priority interest (92/43/ EEC, Annex II). Northern Italian populations of H. adriaticum are small and isolated, with depressed seed set. Given the important implications for plant population conservation, we tested the hypothesis that artificial pollen transfe...

Question Spontaneous succession is the most natural and cost‐effective solution for grassland restoration. However, little is known about the time required for the recovery of grassland functionality, i.e. for the recovery of reproductive and vegetative processes typical of pristine grasslands. Since these processes operate at different scales, we...

The transect method has been widely used to monitor habitat conservation status and has been recently recommended as the best tool to monitor steep ecological gradients, such as those in coastal systems. Despite that, the effectiveness of the transect approach can be limited when considering the sampling effort in terms of time needed for sampling....

Italy is among the European countries with the greatest plant diversity due to both a great environmental heterogeneity and a long history of man-environment interactions. Trait-based approaches to ecological studies have developed greatly over recent decades worldwide, although several issues concerning the relationships between plant functional t...

Soil salinity is among the main factors influencing seed germination in coastal dunes, acting as a major determinant of species establishment and growth. Tolerance to salinity during the germination process is crucial especially for species of the drift line, which are exposed to high levels. Cakile maritima is an annual species of coastal dunes wh...

Linking the functional role of plants and pollinators in pollination networks to ecosystem functioning and resistance to perturbations can represent a valuable knowledge to implement sound conservation and monitoring programs. The aim of this study was to assess the resistance of pollination networks in coastal dune systems and to test whether poll...

Coastal wetlands worldwide are retreating owing to several anthropogenic pressures and accelerated sea level rise (SLR). The importance of preserving salt marshes and the services they provide is being increasingly recognized and wetlands have become the target of several international initiatives and conservation regulations. Thus, geospatial mode...

The 10th EDGG Field Workshop took place in a sector of the Central Apennine Mountains, Italy, in June 2017. Altogether, 22 researchers from nine European and Asian countries attended this Field Workshop. We sampled plant and insect biodiversity in sub-montane and lower-montane grasslands along a precipitation gradient, from the L’Aquila valley and...

The loss of species that engage in close ecological interactions, such as pollination, has been shown to lead to secondary extinctions, ultimately threatening the overall ecosystem stability and functioning. Pollination studies are currently flourishing at all possible levels of interaction organization (i.e., species, guild, group and network), an...

The study investigated the effects of human-induced landscape patterns on species richness in forests. For 80 plots of fixed size, we measured human disturbance (categorized as urban/industrial and agricultural land areas), at ‘local’ and ‘landscape’ scale (500 m and 2500 m radius from each plot, respectively), the distance from the forest edge, an...

Question Coastal environments have often been described as azonal. While this characteristic is clear for the foredune system, it seems less evident for more inland fixed dunes, which host habitats of major conservation concern, whose features seem to be more related to local climatic conditions. We hypothesized that, unlike other coastal habitats,...

Sand dune perennial grasslands are valuable coastal habitats, considered among those with major conservation concerns. The priority EU habitat 2130* has an almost continuous distribution area along the coasts of Northern Europe and the Black Sea. In the Mediterranean basin it is found only along the North Adriatic coast, isolated from the rest of t...

Questions In animal‐mediated pollination, pollinators can be regarded as a limiting resource for which entomophilous plant species might interact to assure pollination, an event pivotal for their reproduction and population maintenance. At community level, spatially aggregated co‐flowering species can thus be expected to exhibit suitable suites of...

Food-deceptive orchid species have traditionally been considered pollination specialized to bees or butterflies. However, it is unclear to which concept of specialization this assumption is related; if to that of phenotypic specialization or of functional specialization. The main aim of this work was to verify if pollinators of five widespread food...

Several factors have been taken into account to explain the distribution of orchid species. We explored the extent to which plant community attributes affect the abundance and reproductive fitness of three orchid species (Anacamptis morio, Himantoglossum adriaticum and Ophrys sphegodes), native to dry grasslands. Structural attributes of plant comm...

A central goal in vegetation ecology is the identification of processes that influence species assemblage and distribution within a community. Among the wide variety of biotic interactions, plant-pollinator interactions are assumed to have a marked influence on plant communities assemblage and dynamics. The aim of this work was to verify if in dry...

The monitoring of biodiversity has mainly focused on the species level. However, researchers and land managers are making increasing use of complementary assessment tools that address higher levels of biological organisation, i.e. communities, habitats and ecosystems. Recently, a variety of frameworks have been proposed for assessing the conservati...

Plant-pollinator interactions is an eager topic, addressed since Darwin's times but has become imperative after recent concerns on pollinator's decline. Various approaches are needed to build a knowledge-based evidence and to further conservation actions. We investigated a Natura 2000 protected environment, dry grasslands, by collecting data on pl...

In terrestrial systems, the plant community concept has acquired a central role in land planning as a key approach for biodiversity conservation above the species level. In this frame, Red Lists of habitats and plant communities are increasingly arising interest at the global level and also in Europe (see, e.g., Rodwell et al. 2013). Starting with...

Given the growing consensus on the positive effect of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning (Balvanera et al. 2006; Cardinale et al. 2012), species richness and loss are among the simplest and most used measures of habitats evaluation. Species diversity in a plant community is assumed to be determined by two sets of factors. The first refers to the...

Among the fine spatial scale processes that assemble plant communities, both competitive and facilitative interspecific interactions are currently supposed to be part of fundamental biotic assembly rules (Rathcke, 1983; Stoll & Weiner, 2000). One of the most fascinating yet tricky biotic interaction is the pollinator sharing within co-flowering en...

Coastal sand dune landscapes hold habitats of high economic, social and ecological value on a global scale. At the same time, they are among the most threatened ecosystems worldwide, facing escalating anthropogenic pressures, drawing attention to how to achieve trade-offs among society’s needs in land-use allocation and long-term biodiversity conse...

Coastal sand dune landscapes hold habitats of high economic, social and ecological value on a global scale. At the same time, they are among the most threatened ecosystems worldwide, facing escalating anthropogenic pressures, drawing attention to their resilience as a necessary condition for both biodiversity conservation and sustainable developmen...