Life-form adaptations and substrate availability explain a 100-year post-grazing succession of bryophyte species in the Moricsala Strict Nature Reserve, Latvia

Bryophyte species composition, richness and life-form distributions were studied in a succession after termination of land-use as meadows and pasture in the Moricsala Strict Nature Reserve. Detailed lists of bryophyte species in various vegetation types, which were produced in the early 1900s by Karl Reinhold Kupffer, were compared with those prepared from 2006 to 2010 to determine changes in species composition. Colonisations and extinctions of bryophyte species and life forms could be explained by increases in available substrates (living trees, dead wood, ground layer disturbance patches), and increasingly shaded conditions. In each forest type, the species diversity (alpha diversity) in…