Valério De Patta Pillar

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul | UFRGS · Departamento de Ecologia

We review the underlying principles of plant community assembly and build a conceptual model into which we map experiments and simulation approaches. In this model, environmental filtering selects individuals from a species pool based on non-independent traits bounded by trade-offs. The feedback of communities on environmental factors mimics plant-...

Aim Theoretical, experimental and observational studies have shown that biodiversity–ecosystem functioning (BEF) relationships are influenced by functional community structure through two mutually non‐exclusive mechanisms: (1) the dominance effect (which relates to the traits of the dominant species); and (2) the niche partitioning effect [which re...

As Earth's climate has varied strongly through geological time, studying the impacts of past climate change on biodiversity helps to understand the risks from future climate change. However, it remains unclear how paleoclimate shapes spatial variation in biodiversity. Here, we assessed the influence of Quaternary climate change on spatial dissimila...

Questions The adjustment of grazing pressure affects above‐ground biomass and its variation in space and time, which is a tool in grassland management for biodiversity conservation and livestock production. Here we ask to what extent the variation in above‐ground biomass at the scale of quadrats is predictive of (1) community‐weighted means (CWMs)...

Afforestation of subtropical grasslands increased during the last decade and their impacts on soil biota and functions are not well known. Here we investigated the effects of grassland afforestation with Eucalyptus on soil Collembola communities in southern Brazil. By using paired transects (native grassland vs. plantation), we assessed Collembola...

The effects of climate changes on the stability of plant communities is a major concern, especially for the maintenance of ecosystem processes and services. Biodiversity may buffer communities from the effects of these disturbances, providing resistance and resilience. Here we assess the interplay between biodiversity facets on resistance and resil...

The effects of climate changes on the stability of plant communities is a major concern, especially for the maintenance of ecosystem processes and services. Biodiversity may buffer communities from the effects of these disturbances, providing resistance and resilience. Here we assess the interplay between biodiversity facets on resistance and resil...

The effects of climate changes on the stability of plant communities is a major concern, especially for the maintenance of ecosystem processes and services. Biodiversity may buffer communities from the effects of these disturbances, providing resistance and resilience. Here we assess the interplay between biodiversity facets on resistance and resil...

Abstract. The Río de la Plata Grasslands (RPG) are one of the largest areas of open ecosystems (grasslands, shrublands and savannas) in the world. Historically, these systems have experienced, and continue to experience, an enormous loss of natural habitats. Moreover, their importance has been largely invisible in comparison to forested systems. Th...

Global patterns of regional (gamma) plant diversity are relatively well known, but whether these patterns hold for local communities, and the dependence on spatial grain, remain controversial. Using data on 170,272 georeferenced local plant assemblages, we created global maps of alpha diversity (local species richness) for vascular plants at three...

The erosion of functional diversity may foster the collapse of ecological systems. Functional diversity is ultimately determined by the distribution of species traits. As species traits are a legacy of species evolutionary history, one might expect that the mode of trait evolution influences community resistance under the loss of functional diversi...

Safeguarding Earth’s tree diversity is a conservation priority due to the importance of trees for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services such as carbon sequestration. Here, we improve the foundation for effective conservation of global tree diversity by analyzing a recently developed database of tree species covering 46,752 species. We q...

Due to massive energetic investments in woody support structures, trees are subject to unique physiological, mechanical, and ecological pressures not experienced by herbaceous plants. Despite a wealth of studies exploring trait relationships across the entire plant kingdom, the dominant traits underpinning these unique aspects of tree form and func...

It has been argued that the mechanisms structuring ecological communities may be more generalizable when based on traits than on species identities. If so, patterns in the assembly of community‐level traits along environmental gradients should be similar in different places in the world. Alternatively, geographical change in the species pool and re...

The South Brazilian grasslands (Campos Sulinos) form the dominant vegetation in southern Brazil. They are species-rich ecosystems that occur under distinct geomorphological and climatic conditions but spatial variation of plant species diversity remains understudied. Here, we present a detailed description of plant communities across the region. Ou...

Question Grazing is an important disturbance for maintenance of structure and functioning of the plant communities in grassy ecosystems. Functional characteristics of plants, which are responsible for their response to grazing, vary at inter‐ and intraspecific levels. Here, we assessed: (1) the extent of intraspecific trait variation when compared...

Plant functional traits can predict community assembly and ecosystem functioning and are thus widely used in global models of vegetation dynamics and land–climate feedbacks. Still, we lack a global understanding of how land and climate affect plant traits. A previous global analysis of six traits observed two main axes of variation: (1) size variat...

The links between vegetation and soil biota are responsible for a variety of ecosystem processes and services that can be affected by grazing. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the effects of grazing frequency in natural grasslands’ biodiversity (plant and collembola communities) and on ecosystem processes (decomposition and biomass accumulation)...

A bstract Due to massive energetic investments in woody support structures, trees are subject to unique physiological, mechanical, and ecological pressures not experienced by herbaceous plants. When considering trait relationships across the entire plant kingdom, plant trait frameworks typically must omit traits unique to large woody species, there...

Assessing biodiversity status and trends in plant communities is critical for understanding, quantifying and predicting the effects of global change on ecosystems. Vegetation plots record the occurrence or abundance of all plant species co‐occurring within delimited local areas. This allows species absences to be inferred, information seldom provid...

Progress in phylogenetic community ecology is often limited by the availability of phylogenetic information and the lack of appropriate methods and solutions to deal with this problem. We estimate the effect of the lack of phylogenetic information on the relations among taxa measured by commonly used phylogenetic metrics in comparative studies and...

Differently from commonly used forest conservation strategies, the absence of disturbance in non-forest-ecosystems can result in loss of biodiversity. Grassy ecosystems characterize extensive areas in all biomes in Brazil, offering great contribution to biological diversity and providing ecosystem services on which society depends. Palaeoecological...

Trait-based approaches offer complementary views to the classic taxonomic approach, which is a crucial step forward to unveil mechanisms of community assembly, species interactions, ecosystem functioning, and tackling important conservation issues. These approaches require an enormous sampling effort to provide complete trait datasets, consequently...

Fire is an important ecological and evolutionary factor affecting plant communities worldwide. After fire, plants can resprout or germinate and systems may differ according to their post-fire regeneration strategies. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to analyze the most important regeneration strategies in Brazilian subtropical grasslands....

The Program for Biodiversity Research (PPBio) is an innovative program designed to integrate all biodiversity research stakeholders. Operating since 2004, it has installed long-term ecological research sites throughout Brazil and its logic has been applied in some other southern-hemisphere countries. The program supports all aspects of research nec...

Conservation biology is designed to identify pressing environmental problems and to solve them. This review evaluates the relative effort of conservation biology in problem-based and solution-based research, and tests whether or not this has changed in the past decades for five major drivers of biodiversity loss, i.e. habitat loss and fragmentation...

Questions Eragrostis plana is the most invasive species in grasslands of southern Brazil. We ask how it affects the functional structure of communities considering leaf traits related to forage palatability for grazers. As consensus is lacking about whether to include or omit the invasive species in the analysis, we propose a method for partitionin...

Question In vegetation science, the compositional dissimilarity among two or more groups of plots is usually tested with dissimilarity‐based multivariate analysis of variance (db‐MANOVA), whereas the compositional characterization of the different groups is performed by means of indicator species analysis. Although db‐MANOVA and indicator species a...

Due to a production error this article was inadvertently released early. It has been temporarily removed until the embargo is lifted.

Due to a production error this article was inadvertently released early. It has been temporarily removed until the embargo is lifted.

The Program for Biodiversity Research (PPBio) is an innovative program designed to integrate all biodiversity research stakeholders. Operating since 2004, it has installed long-term ecological research sites throughout Brazil and its logic has been applied in some other southern-hemisphere countries. The program supports all aspects of research nec...

Aim To identify functional traits that best predict community assembly without knowing the underlying environmental drivers. Methods We propose a new method based on the correlation r(XY) between two matrices of potential community composition: the matrix X is fuzzy‐weighted by trait similarities of species, and the matrix Y is derived by Beals sm...

Functional traits determine an organism's performance in a given environment and as such determine which organisms will be found where. Species respond to local conditions, but also to larger scale gradients, such as climate. Trait ecology links these responses of species to community composition and species distributions. Yet, we often do not know...

Both historical and contemporary environmental conditions determine present biodiversity patterns, but their relative importance is not well understood. One way to disentangle their relative effects is to assess how different dimensions of beta-diversity relate to past climatic changes, i.e., taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional compositional dis...

Functional traits determine an organism’s performance in a given environment and as such determine which organisms will be found where. Species respond to local conditions, but also to larger scale gradients, such as climate. Trait ecology links these responses of species to community composition and species distributions. Yet, we often do not know...

Biodiversity shortfalls are knowledge gaps that may result from uneven sampling through time and space and human interest biases. Gaps in data of functional traits of species may add uncertainty in functional diversity and structure measures and hinder inference on ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services, with negative implications for conserv...

It has been increasingly argued that ecological restoration should focus more on targeting ecosystem services than on species composition of reference ecosystems. In this sense, the role that species play on community assembly and functioning through their functional traits is very relevant, because effect traits mediate ecosystem processes, ultima...

Aim To identify functional traits that best predict community assembly without knowing the driving environmental factors. Methods We propose a new method that is based on the correlation r(XY) between two matrices of potential community composition: matrix X is fuzzy-weighted by trait similarities of species, and matrix Y is derived by Beals smoot...

Trees are of vital importance for ecosystem functioning and services at local to global scales, yet we still lack a detailed overview of the global patterns of tree diversity and the underlying drivers, particularly the imprint of paleoclimate. Here, we present the high-resolution (110 km) worldwide mapping of tree species richness, functional and...

We investigated the role of local and landscape environmental variables on anurans density classified as habitat specialists and generalists in grassland landscapes, known as South Brazilian grasslands (SBG). In this region, we surveyed 187 ponds distributed over 40 landscape sampling units. For each pond, 31 local environmental variables were meas...

Although trees are key to ecosystem functioning, many forests and tree species across the globe face strong threats. Preserving areas of high biodiversity is a core priority for conservation; however, different dimensions of biodiversity and varied conservation targets make it difficult to respond effectively to this challenge. Here, we (i) identif...

The original version of the article unfortunately contained an error.

Aim Intraspecific trait variation (ITV) within natural plant communities can be large, influencing local ecological processes and dynamics. Here, we shed light on how ITV in vegetative and floral traits responds to large‐scale abiotic and biotic gradients (i.e., climate and species richness). Specifically, we tested whether associations of ITV with...

Abstract: Grazing exclusion may lead to biodiversity loss and homogenization of species-rich and heterogeneous grassland ecosystems, and these effects may cascade to higher trophic levels and ecosystem properties. To date, there is no empirical evidence for the effects of alleviating the disturbance regime in grassland ecosystems. Using data of the...

The benefits of the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis between plants and fungi are modulated by the functional characteristics of both partners. However, it is unknown to what extent functionally distinct groups of plants naturally associate with different AM fungi. We reanalysed 14 high‐throughput sequencing data sets describing AM fungal comm...

Tradução do artigo original “Andrade et al. 2019. Grassland vegetation sampling — a practical guide for sampling and data analysis. Acta Botanica Brasilica 33(4): 786-795” que pode ser acessado aqui (http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0102-33062019abb0160). Em caso de citação deve ser mencionado o artigo original. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -...

Grazing exclusion may lead to biodiversity loss and homogenization of naturally heterogeneous and species-rich grassland ecosystems, and these effects may cascade to higher trophic levels and ecosystem properties. Although grazing exclusion has been studied elsewhere, the consequences of alleviating the disturbance regime in grassland ecosystems re...

Applied Vegetation Science (AVS) is a well‐established journal in the landscape of ecological research, and in recent years this is recognised by the quality of submissions and rigorous selection procedures. We devote constant effort to making AVS an attractive publication venue for novel research of vegetation in the context of environmental chang...

Temperate subhumid grasslands extend in the eastern part of South America. This region represents one of the most diverse, largest and less transformed grassland areas in the world. The grasslands occupy the vast and continuous plains of central-eastern Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil that surround the Río de la Plata estuary. For this reaso...

O processo de expansão florestal tem sido observado em regiões de mosaicos de campo-floresta no Sul do Brasil, especialmente em campos excluídos de fogo e pastejo. Outros fatores influenciam esse processo, porém a magnitude ainda permanece pouco compreendida. Neste estudo, avaliamos os padrões da vegetação lenhosa estabelecida num campo excluído de...

The first issue of the Journal of Vegetation Science was published 30 years ago (JVS; van der Maarel 1990). Starting our jubilee volume, we assessed trends in vegetation science over the past three decades and tried to identify new horizons (Chytrý et al. 2019). Then, simultaneously with routine publishing the 30th volume, we worked towards further...

Aim Locally abundant species are usually widespread, and this pattern has been related to properties of the niches and traits of species. However, such explanations fail to account for the potential of traits to determine species niches and often overlook statistical artefacts. Here, we examine how trait distinctiveness determines the abilities of...

The complexity of ecological systems is a major challenge for practitioners and decision-makers who work to avoid, mitigate and manage environmental change. Here, we illustrate how metaecology – the study of spatial interdependencies among ecological systems through fluxes of organisms, energy, and matter – can enhance understanding and improve man...

Grassland and savanna ecosystems are the original vegetation types of more than 30% of the Brazilian territory, but conservation and training of future professionals has largely focused on forests. In fact, no standard protocols exist for sampling grassland vegetation for environmental planning or licensing. Neglecting non-forest ecosystems may hav...

Climate change is a global phenomenon that affects biophysical systems and human well-being. The Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change entered into force in 2016 with the objective of strengthening the global response to climate change by keeping global temperature rise this century well below 2 °C above pre-i...

The ability of an invasive species to establish is mostly determined by its biotic interactions with native species from recipient community. Here we evaluate the competitive effects and responses of the invasive Eragrostis plana when interacting with native species, in order to identify possible mechanisms driving invasion in Río de la Plata grass...

Brazil's environmental legislation obliges private properties to retain a fixed proportion of their total area with native vegetation, the so-called “Legal Reserves”. Those areas represent practically one third of the country's native vegetation and are well known for their role in biodiversity protection and in the provisioning of a wide range of...

Climate change can threaten grassland ecosystem services by altering vegetation functional structure and mediated ecological processes. Such threats can risk the sustainable use of natural rangelands for cattle production. Here we investigate how changes in rainfall alter functional traits and diversity and ecosystem processes of a native grassland...

Resumo A legislação ambiental brasileira requer que as propriedades privadas mantenham uma proporção de sua área coberta com vegetação nativa, as chamadas Reservas Legais. Essas áreas representam praticamente um terço da vegetação nativa do país e são reconhecidas pelo seu importante papel na proteção da biodiversidade e na provisão de uma vasta ga...