Effects of disturbance type and microhabitat on species and functional diversity relationship in stream-bank plant communities

Spatial heterogeneity in site conditions and differing disturbance types are common features of natural landscapes. We asked: does the relationship between species diversity and functional trait diversity (SD-FD relationship) of plant communities vary among habitats experiencing different types of disturbance and among microhabitats (i.e., landscape position) within a landscape? We quantified the relationship between species richness and functional richness (FRic) and between species evenness and functional evenness (FEve) of riparian plant communities along small headwater streams at five spatially adjacent microhabitats in two types of disturbed (wildfire and clearcut logging with buffer) and reference habitats (unlogged mature forest) in northwestern Ontario, Canada. We found significant dependence of species richness vs. FRic relationship on microhabitat, but not on disturbance type. Species…