Sergio de Tomás Marín

Symbiotic nitrogen-fixing plants such as Russian olive, can significantly impact soil chemistry and invertebrate biodiversity in riparian ecosystems. Here, the effects of Russian olive on soil chemical properties and invertebrate communities in riparian zones of the southwestern U.S. were investigated. Russian olive stands were compared to native c...

Introduction Functional trait-based approaches are extensively applied to the study of mechanisms governing community assembly along environmental gradients. These approaches have been classically based on studying differences in mean values among species, but there is increasing recognition that alternative metrics of trait distributions should be...

Background and aims Submediterranean areas are rich ecotones, where slight modifications in environmental conditions can lead to substantial changes in the composition of plant communities. They thus offer an ideal scenario to examine plant community assembly. In this study, we followed a trait-based approach including intraspecific variability to...

Background The Iberian Peninsula comprises one of the largest boundaries between Mediterranean and Eurosiberian vegetation, known as sub-Mediterranean zone. This ecotone hosts many unique plant species and communities and constitutes the low-latitude (warm) margin of numerous central European species which co-occur with Mediterranean vegetation. Tw...

Extensive research efforts are devoted to understand fine root trait variation and to confirm the existence of a belowground root economics spectrum (RES) from acquisitive to conservative root strategies that is analogous to the leaf economics spectrum (LES). The economics spectrum implies a trade-off between maximizing resource acquisition and pro...

To investigate the effects of Russian olive on nutrients cycling in a riparian area of New Mexico (U.S.A.), we measured soil concentrations of NH4+, NO3- and PO43-, as well as CO2, CH4 and N2O fluxes in the field and from soil incubations in the lab. We measured gas fluxes both in the field and from soil incubations to examine soil differences with...

The aim of this study was to determine the traits that define the optical properties of the needles of four coniferous species: Picea abies, Picea omorika, Abies alba and Pinus sylvestris. The analysis included measurements of the needles for their morphological and anatomical aspects, reflectances at the upper and lower needle surfaces through the...