The effects of urbanization on functional dispersion of plant reproductive traits in Cerrado fragments

One challenge of landscape ecology involves understanding the effects of expanded anthropized areas and related land-use changes on species over time. Understanding how floristic composition is shaped in urban and rural environments is a prerequisite for undertaking the development and implementation of conservation strategies in urban areas. We aimed to investigate landscape composition over temporal scales and resultant effects on the functional diversity and species richness of plants in Cerrado fragments. We sampled 18 Cerrado fragments in urban and rural areas of Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul. We compared Functional Diversity indices between urban and rural areas. We evaluated whether species richness and functional dispersion (FDis) are affected by the surrounding matrix at a 1-km radius in different years (1985, 2002, 2018). In total, 123 species were recorded in the fragments, and species richness ranged from 15 to 33 . Functional richness (FRic) was higher in urban fragments and lower in rural fragments. Land use had no effect on species richness, but functional dispersion was negatively affected by changes in the landscape across time, the loss of green areas from 1985 to 2002, and the expansion of urban areas from 2002 to 2018. Species richness is not a useful metric for understanding the temporal impacts of landscape changes on plants, since plant community dynamics demonstrate an increase in the dominance of species with greater similarity of traits.