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117
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
February 2019 - present
November 2017 - January 2019
May 2011 - October 2013
Publications
Publications (117)
Aim
Humans have spread plants globally for millennia, inadvertently causing ecological disruptions. However, biological invasions also provide a unique opportunity to study the process of niche dynamics, through which species adapt their niche when confronted with novel environments. Focusing on the Mediterranean Basin, we assessed 1) which traits...
Understanding the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) is crucial to predicting the consequences of ongoing global biodiversity loss. However, what drives BEF relationships in natural ecosystems under globally changing conditions remains poorly understood.
To address this knowledge gap, we applied a trait‐based approach...
Invasive alien species represent a major threat to global biodiversity and the sustenance of ecosystems. Globally, mountain ecosystems have shown a degree of resistance to invasive species due to their distinctive ecological features. However, in recent times, the construction of linear infrastructure, such as roads, might weaken this resistance, e...
Trait‐based ecology has already revealed main independent axes of trait variation defining trait spaces that summarize plant adaptive strategies, but often ignoring intraspecific trait variability (ITV). By using empirical ITV‐level data for two independent dimensions of leaf form and function and 167 species across five habitat types (coastal dune...
The Mediterranean Basin has historically been subject to alien plant invasions that threaten its unique biodiversity. This seasonally dry and densely populated region is undergoing severe climatic and socioeconomic changes, and it is unclear whether these changes will worsen or mitigate plant invasions. Predictions are often biased, as species may...
Global change pressures are highlighting the need to better understand the mechanisms driving the temporal stability of natural communities under different environmental conditions. There is ample evidence that species richness helps communities to withstand environmental fluctuations and stabilise over time. However, it is still debated whether ri...
The role of plant traits in shaping community assembly along environmental gradients is a topic of ongoing research. It is well accepted that plant traits of aboveground organs tend to be conservative in stressful conditions. However, there is limited understanding of how belowground traits respond. Plants may have similar strategies above and belo...
The role of plant traits in shaping community assembly along environmental gradients is a topic of ongoing research. It is well accepted that plant traits of aboveground organs tend to be conservative in stressful conditions. However, there is limited understanding of how belowground traits respond. Plants may have similar strategies above and belo...
Question
Vegetation around the alpine–treeline ecotone faces changes in both climate and land use (i.e. grazing abandonment). Broad‐scale shrub encroachment is considered an effect of these changes, but it remains unclear how this process is mediated by local‐scale environmental heterogeneity. Our goal is to determine which local‐scale environmenta...
Aim:
Understanding the variation in community composition and species abundances (i.e., β-diversity) is at the heart of community ecology. A common approach to examine β-diversity is to evaluate directional variation in community composition by measuring the decay in the similarity among pairs of communities along spatial or environmental distance...
Aim: Invasive species provide an opportunity to study biogeography in action, allowing us to observe how species adapt and fill their environmental niche when introduced to new ecological settings. Here we use sea spurge-a foredune specialist plant species native to Europe which has recently spread across Australia's southern coasts-as a model syst...
Question
Vegetation in the alpine and treeline ecotone faces changes in both climate and land use. Shrub encroachment is considered an effect of these changes, but it’s still unclear how this effect is mediated by environmental heterogeneity. Our goal is to determine which environmental factors shape the fine-scale spatial distribution and temporal...
Plant colonization on archaeological structures is limited by the substrate conditions of stone surfaces. Despite its relevance for ecological studies and the management plans of archaeological sites, the knowledge on monuments substrate (e.g., stones, microhabitats, microsites), which could be suitable sites for plant establishment, is an underest...
An important focus of community ecology, including invasion biology, is to investigate functional trait diversity patterns to disentangle the effects of environmental and biotic interactions. However, a notable limitation is that studies usually rely on a small and easy-to-measure set of functional traits, which might not immediately reflect ongoin...
Aims
Understanding fine-grain diversity patterns across large spatial extents is fundamental for macroecological research and biodiversity conservation. Using the GrassPlot database, we provide benchmarks of fine-grain richness values of Palaearctic open habitats for vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens and complete vegetation (i.e., the sum of the...
Although invasive plants increasingly contribute to the current biodiversity crisis, the mechanisms through which they impact native communities are still poorly understood. Community ecology theory has emphasized direct competitive displacement over common resources, but invasion‐driven ecosystem modifications, such as altered soil pH, might also...
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...
Aim
Here, we aim to: (a) investigate the local effect of environmental and anthropogenic factors on alien plant invasion in sub-Antarctic islands; and (b) explore whether and how functional traits affect alien species dependence on anthropogenic factors in these environments.
Location
Possession Island, Crozet archipelago (French sub-Antarctic isl...
Understanding the variation in community composition and species abundances, i.e., β-diversity, is at the heart of community ecology. A common approach to examine β-diversity is to evaluate directional turnover in community composition by measuring the decay in the similarity among pairs of communities along spatial or environmental distances. We p...
Aims
Humans have deeply eroded biogeographic barriers, causing a rapid spread of alien species across biomes. The Mediterranean Basin is a biodiversity hotspot but is also known as a hub of alien plant invasions, particularly in its European part. Yet, a comprehensive inventory of alien species in the area is missing and understanding of the driver...
Assessing temporal changes in plant communities is a core aim of temporal ecology and a shared priority of global conservation agendas which is particularly urgent in threatened ecosystems. Mediterranean coastal dunes harbour some of the most threatened habitats in Europe. Yet, surprisingly, studies capturing the recent temporal dynamics of biodive...
Indicator species with high fidelity to a-priori defined groups of sites are a relevant tool to ecologically characterize plant or animal assemblages. The identification of indicator or diagnostic species is usually performed by summarizing the species abundances within each group of sites. Species with high concentration in a given group of sites...
Ailanthus altissima is an extremely aggressive and globally invasive species. This tree has ideal growing conditions in ruderal areas, and is difficult to manage, as cutting is a trigger for the sprouting of new suckers. Despite the wide literature on the negative impacts of this species, measurements of its interaction with archaeological monument...
Aim: Here, we aim to: (i) investigate the local effect of environmental and human-related factors on alien plant invasion in sub-Antarctic islands; (ii) explore the relationship between alien species features and their dependence on anthropogenic propagule pressure; and (iii) unravel key traits conferring invasiveness in the sub-Antarctic. Location...
Networks of protected areas are fundamental for biodiversity conservation, but many factors determine their conservation efficiency. In particular, on top of other human-driven disturbances, invasions by non-native species can cause habitat and biodiversity loss. Jointly understanding what drives patterns of plant diversity and of non-native specie...
Aim
More than ever, ecologists seek to understand how species are distributed and have assembled into communities using the “filtering framework”. This framework is based on the hypothesis that local assemblages result from a series of abiotic and biotic filters applied to regional species pools and that these filters leave predictable signals in o...
Demographic compensation arises when vital rates change in opposite directions across populations, buffering the variation in population growth rates, and is a mechanism often invoked to explain the stability of species geographic ranges. However, studies on demographic compensation have disregarded the effects of temporal variation in vital rates...
Questions
The spread of alien plant species is one of the main threats to the biodiversity of different natural habitats, and coastal dune habitats are among the most affected. There is a considerable local and regional variation in the level of alien plant invasion on coastal dunes. We asked what are the patterns of invasion across European coasta...
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...
Beta diversity has long been used to summarize the amount of variation in species composition among a set of N sampling units. However, while classical beta diversity provides an estimate of multiple-site dissimilarity among all sampling units, it is not informative on the changes of multiple-site dissimilarity as a function of sampling effort. For...
It is now commonplace in community ecology to assess patterns of phylogenetic or functional diversity in order to inform our understanding of the assembly mechanisms that structure communities. While both phylogenetic and functional approaches have been used in conceptually similar ways, it is not clear if they both in fact reveal similar community...
Climate warming is supposed to enlarge the area climatically suitable to the naturalization of alien garden plants in temperate regions. However, the effects of a changing climate on the spread of naturalized ornamentals have not been evaluated by spatially and temporarily explicit range modelling at larger scales so far. Here, we assess how climat...
Increased globalization has accelerated the movement of species around the world. Many of these nonnative species have the potential to profoundly alter ecosystems. The mechanisms underpinning this impact are often poorly understood, and traits are often overlooked when trying to understand and predict the impacts of species invasions on communitie...
It is well known that alien plant invasion modifies the composition and diversity of resident plant communities, yet our ability to predict patterns of vegetation responses to invasion is hampered by a poor understanding of which functional traits make some resident plants more or less vulnerable to invader impacts. For example, resident species ma...
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...
Aim
It is widely recognized that the prediction of invasion success at large biogeographical scales requires jointly accounting for alien species traits and local community filters, such as abiotic conditions, biotic interactions and propagule pressure. Despite this recognition, interactions between traits and community filters are generally neglec...
GrassPlot is a collaborative vegetation-plot database organised by the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and listed in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD ID EU-00-003). GrassPlot collects plot records (relevés) from grasslands and other open habitats of the Palaearctic biogeographic realm. It focuses on precisely delimited plots...
Most naturalised and invasive alien plant species were originally introduced to regions for horticultural purposes. However, many regions now face an invasion debt from ornamental alien species, which have not yet naturalised. In this regard, climate change represents a threat as it may lower the barriers to naturalisation for some ornamental alien...
The number of alien plants escaping from cultivation into native ecosystems is increasing steadily. We provide an overview of the historical, contemporary and potential future roles of ornamental horticulture in plant invasions. We show that currently at least 75% and 93% of the global naturalised alien flora is grown in domestic and botanical gard...
Dispersal, abiotic and biotic constraints are all involved in explaining the success of invasive plants but how these factors influence the different life stages of an invader remains poorly known. Focusing on highly invaded riparian habitats we asked: (1) how do propagule pressure, resource availability and resident vegetation influence the succes...
Aim
Darwin's naturalization hypothesis states that dissimilarity to native species may benefit alien species establishment due to empty niches and reduced competition. We here add a new dimension to large-scale tests of community invasibility, investigating the role that previously established alien species play in facilitating or hindering new in...
Biotic resistance represents an important natural barrier to potential invaders throughout the world, yet the underlying mechanisms that drive such resistance are still debated. In theory, native communities should repel both functionally similar invaders which compete for the same resources, and invaders which possess less competitive traits. Howe...
Ornamental horticulture is the primary pathway for invasive alien plant introductions. We critically appraise published evidence on the effectiveness of four policy instruments that tackle invasions along the horticulture supply chain: pre‐border import restrictions, post‐border bans, industry codes of conduct and consumer education.
Effective pre‐...
Aim
Interspecific hybridization can promote invasiveness of alien species. In many regions of the world, public and domestic gardens contain a huge pool of non‐native plants. Climate change may relax constraints on their naturalization and hence facilitate hybridization with related species in the resident flora. Here, we evaluate this possible inc...
Questions
How do fine scale community assembly processes (e.g. environmental filtering, symmetric competition, hierarchical competition, facilitation) vary along a natural stress gradient on coastal sand dunes? How does local environmental heterogeneity affect these processes?
Location
Mediterranean coastal sand dunes on the coast of central Italy...
Although terrestrial and marine ecosystems are often perceived as clearly distinct, in coastal areas biological communities on land and at sea are in fact intimately linked. One way in which terrestrial and marine systems interact is through the accumulation of seagrass wrack on beaches, which plays an important role as a nutrient input in coastal...
Alien species are continually introduced in most regions of the world, but not all survive and coexist with the resident native species. Approaches analyzing the functional (or phylogenetic) similarity between invasive species and native communities are increasingly employed to infer the processes underlying successful invasions and to predict futu...