Sonia Garcia Rabasa

Complutense University of Madrid | UCM · Biodiversidad

Key message In European mountain forests, the growth of silver fir ( Abies alba Mill.), sycamore maple ( Acer pseudoplatanus L.), European beech ( Fagus sylvatica L.) and Norway spruce ( Picea abies (L.) H. Karst.) seedlings is more strongly affected by ungulate browsing than by elevation. But, the constraint exerted by ungulates, in particular the...

Fragmentation and habitat loss are considered among the most important threats to biodiversity. More precisely, transformation of natural habitats into farmlands has been identified as one of the primary causes of plant species extinction. Therefore, understanding the effects of habitat fragmentation is crucial to the successful conservation of thr...

Fragmentation and habitat loss are considered among the most important threats to biodiversity. More precisely, transformation of natural habitats into farmlands has been identified as one of the primary causes of plant species extinction. Therefore, understanding the effects of habitat fragmentation is crucial to the successful conservation of thr...

Questions: Forest recovery in Mediterranean environments is influenced by factors such as aridity, herbivory and facilitation by shrubs, as well as by seed limitation in the case of highly fragmented forests. How these various factors interact can determine the direction of secondary succession, yet these interactions are poorly understood. We asse...

Introduction: Forest recovery in Mediterranean environments is influenced by factors such as aridity, herbivory and facilitation by shrubs, as well as by seed limitation in highly fragmented forests. How these various factors interact can determine the direction of secondary succession, yet these interactions are poorly understood. We assessed the...

Lichen-forming fungi interact with their photobionts showing different patterns, from highly specialized species to others that are able to interact with different photobiont lineages over their ranges. Most studies have so far focused on the range of photobionts interacting with a single species or with few species from the same community, genus o...

Fungi are principal actors of forest soils implied in many ecosystem services and the mediation of tree's responses. Forecasting fungal responses to environmental changes is necessary for maintaining forest productivity, although our partial understanding of how abiotic and biotic factors affect fungal communities is restricting the predictions. We...

Fungi are principal actors of forest soils implied in many ecosystem services and the mediation of tree’s responses. Forecasting fungal responses to environmental changes is necessary for maintaining forest productivity, although our partial understanding of how abiotic and biotic factors affect fungal communities is restricting the predictions. We...

One of the current advances in functional biodiversity research is the move away from short-lived test systems towards the exploration of diversity-ecosystem functioning relationships in structurally more complex ecosystems. In forests, assumptions about the functional significance of tree species diversity have only recently produced a new generat...

Forests hold a significant proportion of global biodiversity and terrestrial carbon stocks and are at the forefront of human-induced global change. The dynamics and distribution of forest vegetation determines the habitat for other organisms, and regulates the delivery of ecosystem services, including carbon storage. Presenting recent research acro...

QuestionsEnvironmental factors have been identified as strong modulators of plant community distribution and diversity, especially in arid and semi-arid ecosystems. Despite recent advances in the ecology of biological soil crusts (BSC) from a community perspective, much remains unknown at the species level. Do environmental factors at different sca...

Predicting climate-driven changes in plant distribution is crucial for biodiversity conservation and management under recent climate change. Climate warming is expected to induce movement of species upslope and towards higher latitudes. However, the mechanisms and physiological processes behind the altitudinal and latitudinal distribution range of...

Global change triggers shifts in forest composition, with warming and aridification being particularly threatening for the populations located at the rear edge of the species distributions. This is the case of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) in the Mediterranean Basin where uncertainties in relation to its dynamics under these changing scenarios are...

Histograms of frequencies of the plots belonging to the III Spanish National Forest Inventory with Pinus sylvestris as a dominant tree, according to their mean annual temperature and precipitation [35]. The grey bars show where our sampling sites belong (AR: Arcalís, VA: Valsaín; SN: Sierra Nevada). (DOCX)

Spearman correlation coefficients among the variables measured in the study plots (T: mean annual temperature; P: annual mean precipitation; GSF: global site factor; FI: potential fecundity index; BA: basal area). (DOCX)

This study examined the interactive effects of early and late season herbivory on the growth and reproductive output of figwort (Scrophularia nodosa). The early season herbivore is a pentatomid bug that feeds on and kills the apical meristem, while the late season herbivores are 2 weevil species and a sawfly that all feed on leaves and flowers. The...

Plant breeding systems have been viewed as mechanisms to promote outcrossing in order to increase genetic variability and prevent inbreeding depression. However, reduced fitness after crossing, outbreeding depression, has been often observed between individuals from different populations and more rarely, within populations. We studied the breeding...

Habitat fragmentation poses a major threat to the viability of plant populations. However, the intensity of fragmentation effects may vary among years. We studied two possible effects of habitat fragmentation (patch size and isolation) on the reproduction and proportion of damaged fruits in 24 patches of the self-compatible shrub Colutea hispanica...

Habitat fragmentation is a major cause of species rarity and decline because it increases local population extinctions and reduces recolonisation rates of remnant patches. Although two major patch characteristics (area and connectivity) have been used to predict distribution patterns in fragmented landscapes, other factors can affect the occurrence...

Quantifying dispersal is fundamental to understanding the effects of fragmentation on populations. Although it has been shown that patch and matrix quality can affect dispersal patterns, standard metapopulation models are usually based on the two basic variables, patch area and connectivity. In 2004 we studied migration patterns among 18 habitat pa...

Egg placement by herbivorous insects is an important step in their interaction with their host plants, and is the result of processes operating at different spatial and temporal scales. Although several studies have examined egg-placement patterns at different scales, this has rarely been achieved simultaneously using a multi-scale hierarchical app...