Disentangling effects of disturbance severity and frequency: does bioindication really work?

Ecological disturbances are recognized as a crucial factor influencing the attributes of ecological communities. Depending on the specific adaptation or life cycle, plant species show different responses to disturbances of different magnitudes. Herben et al. (2016) proposed disturbance indicator values (DIVs) that describe the niche of each Central-European plant species along gradients of disturbance frequency and severity. Here we ask if the DIVs can be used in community ecology for bioindication of disturbance regime?

We used a dataset of riparian forests sampled within mountain catchments (the Sudetes, SW Poland). As the regime of disturbance is driven by changes in floods from the spring towards the mouth, we calculated the position of every plot along longitudinal (upstream-downstream) gradient and used it as a proxy for the disturbance severity and frequency. We then calculated the community-weighted means (CWMs) for each of the six indices for each plot and analyzed whether t...

生态干扰是影响生态群落属性的关键因素，已得到学界广泛认可。依据物种特有的适应策略与生命周期，不同植物类群对强度各异的干扰会呈现出差异化响应。赫本等人（Herben et al., 2016）提出了干扰指示值（disturbance indicator values, DIVs），用于刻画中欧各植物物种沿干扰频率与干扰强度梯度的生态位。本研究旨在探讨：干扰指示值能否应用于群落生态学领域，以实现对干扰制度的生物指示？

本研究使用了采自山地集水区（波兰西南部苏台德山区）的河岸林样地数据集。由于干扰制度由洪水变化驱动，且洪水特征沿河流从上游河源至下游河口发生递变，本研究计算了每个样地沿纵向（上游-下游）梯度的位置，并将其作为干扰强度与干扰频率的替代指标。随后，本研究针对每个样地的6项指标分别计算了群落加权平均值（community-weighted means, CWMs），并分析了……