Vinicius Marcilio‐Silva

University of Minnesota | UMN · Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour

Plant-plant interactions are major determinants of the dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems. There is a long tradition in the study of these interactions, their mechanisms and their consequences using experimental, observational and theoretical approaches. Empirical studies overwhelmingly focus at the level of species pairs or small sets of species....

Plant recruitment interactions (i.e., what recruits under what) shape the composition, diversity, and structure of plant communities. Despite the huge body of knowledge on the mechanisms underlying recruitment interactions among species, we still know little about the structure of the recruitment networks emerging in ecological communities. Modelin...

Plant recruitment interactions (i.e., who recruits under whom) between 3,318 vascular plant species across the globe

Urban forest patches This study examines contiguous forest patches in parkland across the Twin Cities Metropolitan Region (TCMA). Unlike street and yard trees, these sites contain multi-layered structure, rely on natural regeneration, and are underlain by pervious surfaces 1 (Fig 1D, 1E). They buffer against climate hazards 2 , improve physical and...

Absolute growth rates change with tree size and age, shifting throughout species ontogeny. The study on interspecific variation in plant traits has generated important insights into the life-history strategies and their consequences for ecosystem functioning. However, it remains unknown to what extent – and even if – species’ functional traits are...

Cyclones are an increasing disturbance in the subtropical region of South America, but their impacts over the forests are still poorly documented. Here, we evaluate the effects of an extratropical cyclone over tree mortality in Araucaria Forest remnants in southern Brazil. We surveyed 116 sites (10 × 20 m each) and collected data on all tree indivi...

The southern Atlantic Forest comprises tropical dense, seasonal, and mixed forests, occurring south of the Doce River in S and SE Brazil, NE Argentina, and SE Paraguay. These forests harbor high biodiversity but have been severely degraded along the centuries following the arrival of Europeans to South America. We revisit the history of use and deg...

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...

Anthropogenic activities are the main cause of habitat loss and fragmentation, which directly affects biodiversity. Disruption in landscape connectivity among populations may affect complex interactions between species and ecosystem functions, such as pollination and seed dispersal, and ultimately result in secondary extinctions. Urbanization, one...

Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research sp...

During forest succession, changes in tree species composition and individual turnover may be affected by deterministic and stochastic processes. In this study, we used both population and community approaches to assess the relative effects of deterministic and stochastic processes along the secondary succession of a tropical forest. We aimed to ide...

Trade‐offs in ecosystem services (ES) have received increasing attention because provisioning services often come at the expense of biodiversity loss. When land‐use patterns are not maximally efficient often provisioning services such as crop production can increase without sacrificing biodiversity. The Atlantic Forest (AF) encompasses Dense, Mixed...

Aim To assess the metacommunity structure of woody plants in the Atlantic Forest ( AF ), compare the structure across its different forest types and evaluate the contribution of multiple scales and environmental drivers for the total biodiversity, providing theoretical basis for efficient conservation of this important hotspot . Location South Ame...

Changes in species composition during the succession of ecological communities potentially reflect the differential effects of environmental filters and limiting similarity on structuring communities. As ecological succession can represent community assembly in action, understanding how successional time affects the functional and phylogenetic stru...

The Atlantic Forest is a hotspot for biodiversity conservation because of its high levels of endemism and threatened areas. Three main forest types, differentiated by their floras, compose the Atlantic Forest: ‘Atlantic Forest’ sensu strictu, ‘Araucaria Mixed Forest’ and ‘Seasonal Forest’. The flora comprises taxa from the Amazon forest, Cerrado ga...

The theory of complex networks has been recently used to explain ecological associations between nurses and seedlings in plant facilitation systems. The structure of these networks is potentially affected by morphological, ecological and evolutionary factors that can determine the facilitative interactions. In the present study, we evaluate the rol...

Phylobetadiversity is defined as the phylogenetic resemblance between communities or biomes. Analyzing phylobetadiversity patterns among different vegetation physiognomies within a single biome is crucial to understand the historical affinities between them. Based on the widely accepted idea that different forest physiognomies within the Southern B...