Climate variability and community stability in Mediterranean shrublands: the role of functional diversity and soil environment

1.Understanding how different factors mediate the resistance of communities to climatic variability is a question of considerable ecological interest that remains mostly unresolved. This is particularly remarkable to improve predictions about the impact of climate change on vegetation.

2.Here we used a trait-based approach to analyse the sensitivity to climatic variability over nine years of 19 Mediterranean shrubland communities located in southwest Spain. We evaluated the role of functional diversity and soil environment as drivers of community stability (assessed as changes in plant cover, species diversity and composition).

3.The studied shrubland communities were strongly sensitive to inter-annual variability in climate. First, colder and drier conditions caused remarkable decreases in total plant cover but increased functional diversity, likely because the reduction of plant cover after harsh climatic conditions promoted the expansion of functionally dissimilar species in th...