Dario Caminha-Paiva

Despite the importance of flowers to plant fitness, it remains unclear whether flowers display ecophysiological strategies and how floral traits are associated with leaf economic traits. Using a comparative analysis of flowers and leaves, we evaluated associations between seven homologous traits related to carbon and water economics in 245 plant species sampled at four locations spanning more than 100 degrees of latitude: Arctic tundra, tropical campos rupestres , Patagonian steppe and a botanical garden in the Mediterranean‐type climate of California. We used correlation analysis, standard major axes, principal component analysis and trait networks to evaluate the associations among flower and leaf traits. We found flower trait combinations ranging from large‐sized flowers with thick petals and lengthy water turnover times ( τ ) to small‐sized flowers with thin petaloid structures and high residual conductance ( g _res ). There was positive scaling among flower and leaf traits such as g _res , τ , petal and leaf thickness, and area. Network analysis showed no modular structure of flower and leaf traits when all species were evaluated together. Our results showcase that flower phenotypes are distributed along a continuum of trait variation and are functionally linked to leaves through water‐ and size‐related traits. This cross‐organ correlation indicates that habitat filtering based on the ecophysiological strategies of one organ would influence the phenotypes of the other organ. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Question: Understanding how nutrient availability and soil conditions influence ecosystem functionality is crucial for predicting changes in the plant community and informing ecological restoration programs. Here, we aimed to characterize the ecological strategies of the most abundant species in an ironstone ecosystem, to understand how edaphic parameters drive these strategies, and to investigate how species taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversities differ among habitats within the ecosystem. Location: The study was conducted in three municipalities in the southern portion of the Espinhaço mountain range in Minas Gerais, Brazil. We sampled plots in three habitat types with distinct soil characteristics. Methods: We employed the CSR framework to characterize the ecological strategies of the most common species across 87,100‐m ² plots. We also measured 19 edaphic parameters in these plots to evaluate their influence on ecological strategies. Results: Most of the 46 sampled species displayed a high proportion of stress‐tolerant strategies due to their small leaves with high dry matter content. This pattern reflects the preponderance of S‐selection at the plot level. Conversely, plots with finer sand and relatively fertile conditions had more competitive strategies, and the species within showed larger leaves with less biomass investment. Conclusions: This study highlights the role of abiotic filters in shaping CSR strategies in ironstone campo rupestre , emphasizing the trade‐off between growth and resource conservation. The low growth rates of species reveal the ecosystem's vulnerability to increased soil removal and disturbances. Additionally, small‐scale edaphic variation relates mainly to physical properties, selected species composition, and functionality.

Understanding how plant functional traits reflect adaptations to different environmental contexts is crucial for predicting vegetation responses to selection pressures imposed by environmental filters. This study examines the functional strategies of woody plants in riparian forests along the Rio Doce, Brazil, particularly focusing on how these strategies vary between saplings and mature trees in response to soil condition, temperature and precipitation. Using Grime's CSR (Competitor, Stress‐tolerant, Ruderal) model, we analysed functional traits and their relationship with environmental parameters across 15 reference riparian sites spanning 473 km of the river. We found a large variation in species functional traits and ecological strategies in both strata, with significant inter‐site differences reflecting regional environmental gradients. Based on community weighted mean values, there were clear differences in ecological strategies displayed by the multiple riparian forests found along the Rio Doce watershed in both strata. Trait‐environment relationship analyses highlighted how trait syndromes shift with environmental gradients. In general, we found for both strata a clear association between climatic variables and species functional traits, with higher C‐selection and leaf size positively related to higher precipitation and lower temperature. On the other hand, edaphic characteristics related differently to species' functional dimensions in each stratum. Soil chemical quality was fundamental for the tree stratum, reflecting the access of deeper root systems to nutrients in lower soil horizons, while soil texture was the main filter for the juvenile stratum, as it directly regulates the availability of water and oxygen for its more superficial roots. By linking functional traits and ecological strategies to environmental factors, our findings indicate that restoration initiatives in the Doce River watershed should abandon the one‐size‐fits‐all approach. Instead, they require the implementation of multiple region‐specific reference ecosystems, according to different ecological strategies shaped by different climatic and edaphic filters along the river.

The use of reference ecosystem inventories to guide ecological restoration is essential for monitoring the success of environmental recovery. The aim of this study was to carry out a floristic and edaphic inventory in old growth riparian forest remnants from the upper River Doce watershed, to provide subsidies for restoration programmes. The study was carried out in the municipalities of Rio Casca, Sem-Peixe, and Santa Cruz do Escalvado. The most representative families in species richness were Fabaceae, Meliaceae, Sapindaceae, Bignoniaceae, and Salicaceae. Based on the chemical properties of the soils, there was considerable heterogeneity among plots, with soils ranging from acidic to neutral (pH 3.8–6.3), with variable contents of phosphorus (0.0–7.6 mg × dm-3), and aluminum saturation (0.0–66.5%), among other factors. The co-inertia analysis showed a highly significant connection of 51.5% (p < 0.001) between floristic and edaphic matrices in tree stratum, and 46.5% (p < 0.001) between floristic and edaphic matrices in the sapling stratum. The reference ecosystems presented here suggest that action plans aimed at recovering the riparian forest should consider the edaphic conditions and its relationship with the plant community on a regional scale, avoiding the extrapolation of observed pattern of taxon-environment relationships to other regions.

The most important condition of ecological restoration is the identification of reference ecosystems, which function as a guide for assertive practice with which biological integrity and ecosystem structure and function can be compared. For restoration and conservation projects to be effective in the current scenario of biodiversity and ecosystem services decay worldwide, it is fundamental to understand the soil-plant interactions in each environment. In this study, we evaluated the structure and composition of the flora in 45 plots, equally distributed in three preserved areas (reference ecosystems) of Atlantic Forest in the upper Rio Doce watershed, Southeast Brazil. We also tested whether differences in species composition were influenced by edaphic factors, both in the adult tree and sapling strata. In both tree and sapling strata, Fabaceae was the species-richest family, followed by Myrtaceae, and Lauraceae. The Fabaceae family also showed the highest importance value for both strata. The soils of the riparian forests were highly heterogeneous among the studied sites. Co-inertia analyses indicated a clear edaphic-floristic gradient in both tree (RV = 0.467; p < 0.001) and sapling (RV = 0.478; p < 0.001) strata, with a connection of 46.7% and 47.8% between the edaphic and floristic matrices for trees and saplings, respectively. We identified the groups of tree and sapling strata species that were strongly associated with either nutritionally richer or poorer soils on each studied site. Understanding how ecological and life-history traits of plant species relate with edaphic factors is an important step to provide scientific-based knowledge to support policies for ecosystem recovery and restoration in the stretches of the Rio Doce watershed.

To achieve the ambitious goals of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, restoration frameworks should embrace the diversity of ecosystems found on Earth, including open‐canopy ecosystems, which have been largely overlooked. Considering the paucity of scientific foundations promoting restoration science, policy, and practice for open tropical ecosystems, we provide overarching guidelines to restore the campo rupestre, a Neotropical, open megadiverse grassland that has been increasingly threatened by multiple human activities, especially mining. Restoration techniques for tropical grasslands are still at its infancy, and attempts to restore campo rupestre have had, so far, low to moderate success, highlighting the need for a tailored restoration framework. In a scenario of increasing degradation and scarcity of on‐site restoration experiments, we propose 10 principles to improve our ability to plan, implement, and monitor restoration in campo rupestre: (1) include socioeconomic dimensions, (2) implement active restoration, (3) keep low soil fertility, (4) restore disturbance regimes, (5) address genetic structure and adaptation potential, (6) restore geographically restricted and specialized ecological interactions, (7) incorporate functional approaches, (8) use seed‐based restoration strategies to enhance biodiversity, (9) translocation is inevitable, and (10) long‐term monitoring is mandatory. Our principles represent the best available evidence to support better science and practice for the restoration of campo rupestre and, to some extent, can be useful for other megadiverse, fire‐prone, and nutrient‐poor ecosystems.

The increase in rates of habitat loss requires an understanding of how biodiversity is distributed. Campo rupestre is an old, climatically buffered, and infertile landscape located in Brazil. Considered a biodiversity hotspot, the campo rupestre is mainly threatened by mining activity that requires a large operating area. Campo rupestre is known for its restricted distribution area and high abiotic heterogeneity, which modulates species coexistence and richness. To recognise the association between habitat type and plant communities, we propose to describe the floristic composition of herbaceous and shrub components in four habitats of the campo rupestre comprising quartzite and ferruginous substrate. We classified habitat types by the main surface soil features. In each habitat, we sampled ten 100-m2 plots to access information on the shrub and ten 1-m2 plots for the herbaceous component. Altogether we sampled 153 species, belonging to 38 families. The cluster analysis ordered by Sorensen metric indicates a clear distinction of species composition in the shrub component in the four habitats. However, the floristic composition of the herbaceous component was similar between the four habitats but showed a distinction when contrasting with the substrate type. Our results highlight the local taxonomic distinction between habitat types and substrates, indicating that the ecological distinction among substrate types of the campo rupestre cannot be overlooked in conservation and restoration actions.