0000000000174397
AUTHOR
Alessandro Chiarucci
showing 11 related works from this author
The invasion history of Elodea canadensis and E. nuttallii (Hydrocharitaceae) in Italy from herbarium accessions, field records and historical litera…
2022
AbstractWe analysed the invasion history of two North American macrophytes (Elodea canadensis and E. nuttallii) in Italy, through an accurate census of all available herbarium and field records, dating between 1850 and 2019, and a rich literature collection describing the initial introduction and naturalisation phase that supports the results obtained by the occurrence records. Elodea canadensis arrived in Italy before 1866 and had two invasion phases, between the 1890s and 1920s and between the 1990s and 2000s; E. nuttallii, probably arrived in the 1970s, started invading in 2000 and the invasion is still ongoing. Botanical gardens and fish farming played a crucial role in dispersal and na…
Benchmarking plant diversity of Palaearctic grasslands and other open habitats
2021
© 2021 The Authors.
Species–area relationship and small-island effect of vascular plant diversity in a young volcanic archipelago
2021
International audience; Aims: Aeolian islands form an active volcanic archipelago. By using updated vascular plant checklists for islands and islets, we tested four hypotheses: (i) Island speciesarea relationship (ISAR) of alien species has lower c-and higher z-values than native species, (ii) islands with active volcanoes have lower species richness than expected for native and alien species, (iii) ISAR of native species shows lower c-and higher z-values than ISARs of Mediterranean land bridge archipelagos and (iv) species richness of smaller islets is independent of area.Location: Aeolian Archipelago, Mediterranean Basin.Taxon: Vascular plants, identified and named according to the Flora …
Fine‐grain beta diversity of Palaearctic grassland vegetation
2021
QUESTIONS: Which environmental factors influence fine-grain beta diversity of vegetation and do they vary among taxonomic groups? LOCATION: Palaearctic biogeographic realm. METHODS: We extracted 4,654 nested-plot series with at least four different grain sizes between 0.0001 m² and 1,024 m² from the GrassPlot database, covering a wide range of different grassland and other open habitat types. We derived extensive environmental and structural information for these series. For each series and four taxonomic groups (vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens, all), we calculated the slope parameter (z-value) of the power law species–area relationship (SAR), as a beta diversity measure. We tested whe…
Habitat type and island identity as drivers of community assembly in an archipelago
2020
Aim: Ecoinformatics offer new opportunity to test islands as biogeographic and eco- logical models. In this paper we predicted three hypotheses: (1) plot-based data issu- ing from vegetation surveys can be used to predict Island Species-Area Relationships (ISARs) or island similarity; (2) the habitat area is an independent predictor of species richness patterns within island; (3) species richness and composition are more de- pendent on habitat type than island identity in land-bridge islands. Area: Tuscan Archipelago, Italy. Methods: We assembled a database of all the vegetation plots available for the archi- pelago. For the first hypothesis we calculated ISARs, using Arrhenius model, and B…
Implementation of IUCN criteria for the definition of the Red List of Ecosystems in Italy
2020
The present work is aimed at presenting the data, methods and criteria that are being used for the assessment of ecosystem collapse risk in Italy.
VegItaly: The Italian collaborative project for a national vegetation database
2012
Abstract Two years after its official start, the national vegetation database VegItaly, a collaborative project supported by the Italian scientific community and developed by a large group of scientists, is presented. This article offers a concise overview of the content of the database, currently consisting of 31,100 vegetation plot, including published and unpublished data. Some basic statistics are analysed; for example, data distribution in space and time, represented vegetation types expressed as physiognomic categories. Although rather young and still in progress, VegItaly already contains data from all the Italian regions and stands as an optimal candidate for the development of an I…
Species–area relationships in continuous vegetation: Evidence from Palaearctic grasslands
2019
Aim Species-area relationships (SARs) are fundamental scaling laws in ecology although their shape is still disputed. At larger areas, power laws best represent SARs. Yet, it remains unclear whether SARs follow other shapes at finer spatial grains in continuous vegetation. We asked which function describes SARs best at small grains and explored how sampling methodology or the environment influence SAR shape. Location Palaearctic grasslands and other non-forested habitats. Taxa Vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens. Methods We used the GrassPlot database, containing standardized vegetation-plot data from vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens spanning a wide range of grassland types throu…
Global endemics-area relationships of vascular plants
2019
Endemics–Area Relationships (EARs)are fundamental in theoretical and applied biogeography for understanding distribution patterns and promoting biodiversity conservation. However, calculating EARs for vascular plant species from existing data is problematic because of biased knowledge of endemic species distributions and differences between taxonomies. We aimed to overcome these challenges by developing a new standardized global dataset based on expert knowledge to produce a set of global EARs. We developed a nested circle design, with grain sizes of 10 4 , 10 5 , 10 6 , 10 7 , and 10 8 km 2 , respectively, and a global distribution of plots based on a stratified random scheme. The number …
Shrines in Central Italy conserve plant diversity and large trees
2015
Sacred natural sites (SNS) are instances of biocultural landscapes protected for spiritual motives. These sites frequently host important biological values in areas of Asia and Africa, where traditional resource management is still upheld by local communities. In contrast, the biodiversity value of SNS has hardly been quantitatively tested in Western contexts, where customs and traditions have relatively lost importance due to modernization and secularization. To assess whether SNS in Western contexts retain value for biodiversity, we studied plant species composition at 30 SNS in Central Italy and compared them with a paired set of similar but not sacred reference sites. We demonstrate tha…
Probabilistic and preferential sampling approaches offer integrated perspectives of Italian forest diversity
2023
Aim: Assessing the performances of different sampling approaches for documenting community diversity may help to identify optimal sampling efforts and strategies, and to enhance conservation and monitoring planning. Here, we used two data sets based on probabilistic and preferential sampling schemes of Italian forest vegetation to analyze the multifaceted performances of the two approaches across three major forest types at a large scale. Location: Italy. Methods: We pooled 804 probabilistic and 16,259 preferential forest plots as samples of vascular plant diversity across the country. We balanced the two data sets in terms of sizes, plot size, geographical position, and vegetation types. F…