Examinando por Autor "Hurtado, Pilar"

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Biodiversity and Management as Central Players in the Network of Relationships Underlying Forest Resilience
(Wiley, 2025-05-12) Hurtado, Pilar; Espelta, Josep Maria; Jaime, Luciana; Martínez-Vilalta, Jordi; Kokolaki, Manto Samou; Lindner, Marcus; Lloret, Francisco
Global change is threatening the integrity of forest ecosystems worldwide, amplifying the need for resilience-based management to ensure their conservation and sustain the services they provide. Yet, current efforts are still limited by the lack of implementation of clear frameworks for operationalizing resilience in decision-making processes. To overcome this limitation, we aim to identify reliable and effective drivers of forest resilience, considering their synergies and trade-offs. From a comprehensive review of 342 scientific articles addressing resilience in forests globally, we identified factors shaping forest resilience. We recognized them into two categories that influence forest responses to disturbances: resilience predictors, which can be modified through management, and codrivers, which are measurable but largely unmanageable (e.g., climate). We then performed network analyses based on predictors and codrivers underlying forest resilience. In total, we recognized 5332 such relationships linking predictors or codrivers with forest attributes resilience. Our findings support the central role of biodiversity, with mixed, non-planted, or functionally diverse forests promoting resilience across all contexts and biomes. While management also enhanced resilience, the success of specific interventions was highly context-dependent, suggesting that its application requires a careful analysis of trade-offs. Specifically, practices like cutting and prescribed burning generally enhanced resilience in terms of tree growth, plant diversity, landscape vegetation cover, and stand structure. In contrast, pest and herbivore control reduced the resilience of plant taxonomic diversity while offering only minimal gains for other variables. Even long-term restoration projects showed clear trade-offs in the resilience of different forest attributes, highlighting the need for careful consideration of these effects in practical management decisions. Overall, we emphasize that a reduced number of predictors can be used to effectively promote forest resilience across most attributes. Particularly, enhancing biodiversity and implementing targeted management strategies when biodiversity is impoverished emerge as powerful tools to promote forest resilience.
Critical predictors of functional, phylogenetic, and taxonomic diversity are geographically structured in lichen epiphytic communities
(Wiley, 2019-04-11) Hurtado, Pilar; Prieto, Maria; Aragón, Gregorio; Escudero, Adrián; Martínez, Isabel
Assessing the response of biological communities to contrasting environmentalconditions is crucial to predict the effects of global change drivers. The influenceof multiple environmental factors may differ depending on the diversity facetconsidered, which emphasizes the need to simultaneously evaluate the functional(FD), phylogenetic (PD) and taxonomic (TD) diversity.2. To examine how these facets of biodiversity respond to environmental changes,we studied lichen epiphytic communities across 47 beech forest fragments fromtwo biogeographic regions. We applied structural equation modelling to relatehabitat fragmentation, climate and habitat quality with FD, PD and TD. We com‐pared the community response to contrasting climatic conditions by analysing in‐dependently Atlantic and Mediterranean communities.3. We found different major drivers of biodiversity patterns across biogeographicregions. Habitat fragmentation performed the highest effect on lichen communi‐ties, with a reduction of FD, PD and TD at both regions. However, the influenceof climate was stronger in the Atlantic region than in the Mediterranean region,where the effect of habitat quality was superior. The effect of the environmentalpredictors over PD and TD was both direct and indirect through the differentcomponents of FD, and their intensity and sign differed across regions. Changesin PD were not related to changes in TD.4. Synthesis. Our results evidenced that the major environmental drivers affect‐ing epiphytic communities were geographically structured. These drivers modi‐fied the diversity of the epiphytic community directly but also indirectly throughchanges in FD, which emerged as a causal but not unique determinant of PD andTD. Our findings also showed the difficulty for inferring TD through PD. Theseresults emphasize the essential role of FD predicting part of the response of lichencommunities to global change drivers but also highlight the importance of con‐sidering multiple biodiversity facets to understand the effects of environmentalchange on community structure.
Intraspecific variability drives functional changes in lichen epiphytic communities across Europe
(Ecological Society of America (ESA) ; Wiley, 2020-02-21) Hurtado, Pilar; Prieto, María; Aragón, Gregorio; de Bello, Francesco; Martínez, Isabel
Traditional approaches in trait-based community ecology typically expect that trait filtering across broad environmental gradients is largely due to replacement of species, rather than intraspecific trait adjustments. Recently, the role of intraspecific trait variability has been largely highlighted as an important contributor mediating the ability of communities to persist under changing conditions and determining the community-level trait variation, particularly across limited environmental gradients. Unfortunately, few studies quantify the relative importance of species turnover versus intraspecific variability mediating the response of communities different from vascular plants. Here, we studied the functional changes in epiphytic lichen communities within 23 beech forests across large latitudinal (ca. 3,000 km) and environmental gradients in Europe to quantify the relative contribution of species turnover and intraspecific variability and the role of climate controlling community-level trait changes. For 58 lichen species, we focused on a set of 10 quantitative functional traits potentially affected by climatic conditions and related to photosynthetic performance (n = 1,184 thalli), water use strategy (n = 1,018 thalli), and nutrient uptake (n = 1,179 thalli). Our results showed that intraspecific trait variability explained most of the functional changes in lichen communities in response to the latitudinal gradient. Further, such functional changes were determined by the covariation between intraspecific trait variability and species turnover, which varied in sign depending on the trait considered. Finally, different climatic predictors explained functional variation due to both intraspecific trait variability and species turnover. We propose that lichen communities cope with contrasting climatic conditions by adjusting the functional trait values of the most abundant species within the communities rather than by the replacement of the species. Consequently, intraspecific variability should be explicitly incorporated to understand the effect of environmental changes on lichen communities, even over large environmental variations, better. Our results challenge the universality of the hypothesis that species turnover chiefly drives functional trait changes across large environmental gradients and call for a wider test of such important assumptions in trait ecology in different organism types and ecosystems.
Unfolding the dynamics of ecosystems undergoing alternating wet-dry transitional states
(Wiley, 2024-08-02) Arias-Real, Rebeca; Delgado-Baquerizo, Manuel; Sabater, Sergi; Gutiérrez-Cánovas, Cayetano; Valencia, Enrique; Aragón, Gregorio; Cantón, Yolanda; Datry, Thibault; Giordani, Paolo; Medina, Nagore G.; Ríos, Asunción de los; Romaní, Anna M.; Weber, Bettina; Hurtado, Pilar
A significant fraction of Earth's ecosystems undergoes periodic wet-dry alternating transitional states. These globally distributed water-driven transitional ecosystems, such as intermittent rivers and coastal shorelines, have traditionally been studied as two distinct entities, whereas they constitute a single, interconnected meta-ecosystem. This has resulted in a poor conceptual and empirical understanding of water-driven transitional ecosystems. Here, we develop a conceptual framework that places the temporal availability of water as the core driver of biodiversity and functional patterns of transitional ecosystems at the global scale. Biological covers (e.g., aquatic biofilms and biocrusts) serve as an excellent model system thriving in both aquatic and terrestrial states, where their succession underscores the intricate interplay between these two states. The duration, frequency, and rate of change of wet-dry cycles impose distinct plausible scenarios where different types of biological covers can occur depending on their desiccation/hydration resistance traits. This implies that the distinct eco-evolutionary potential of biological covers, represented by their trait profiles, would support different functions while maintaining similar multifunctionality levels. By embracing multiple alternating transitional states as interconnected entities, our approach can help to better understand and manage global change impacts on biodiversity and multifunctionality in water-driven transitional ecosystems, while providing new avenues for interdisciplinary studies
Water availability, stand structure, and hydraulic trait diversity drive forest stability
(Elsevier, 2025-10-15) Roces-Díaz, José V.; García-Valdés, Raúl; Cáceres, Miquel de; Descals, Adrià; Hurtado, Pilar; Lloret, Francisco; Espelta, Josep María; Álvarez-Martínez, José Manuel; Batllori, Enric; Martínez-Vilalta, Jordi
Forest productivity, essential for climate change mitigation, is increasingly threatened by environmental fluctuations, particularly droughts. Temporal stability in forest productivity —its ability to remain consistent over time— is influenced by climate, forest structure, community maturity, and tree composition and diversity. However, while the effect of taxonomic composition and diversity on forest stability has been extensively studied, the role of composition and diversity in drought related trait has received less attention. This study explores how drought-tolerance traits, alongside climatic and structural factors affect forest stability between 2000 and 2018 across ∼40,000 forest plots in Spain. We used satellite-derived vegetation indices as proxies for productivity to assess stability, and forest inventory data and species traits to calculate community-level drought tolerance. Water availability was the strongest positive driver of stability, with temporal stability, soil water-holding capacity, and forest maturity and density also contributing positively, though to a lesser extent. Minimum temperature had a small and negative effect. Functional diversity in drought-tolerance traits related to hydraulic safety (P50 and Hydraulic Safety Margin) had a modest but statistically significant and consistent positive effect on stability. Community-weighted mean trait values showed mixed effects. While climate was the dominant factor shaping forest stability, but our findings highlight a relevant role of drought-tolerance diversity, providing a potential mechanism to explain previous findings that drought-tolerance diversity enhances long-term productivity in drought-prone regions. This suggests that fostering drought-related functional diversification could be considered as a potential management strategy to strengthen the stability of forest ecosystem services, especially amid rising climate variability and drought frequency.