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Plant strategies and agricultural landscapes: survival in spatially and temporally fragmented habitat

Year of publication2002
Author(s)Paul Opdam
Co-authorsGeertsema W, Kropff MJ
Number of pages16
Purchasehttp://www.springerlink.com/content
JournalLandscape Ecology
Page(s)16
Magazine No.Vol. 17 / Nr. 3
Publication typeJournal article
In agricultural landscapes many plant species are limited to the network of landscape elements that are not used for agricultural production. This habitat is fragmented in space and time due to anthropogenic, biotic and abiotic factors. Therefore, plant populations are spatially sub-divided and their persistence might be dependent on the spatial dynamics in the network of local populations. Dispersal characteristics and seed bank persistence are main determinants of colonization ability which in turn is a key determinant of metapopulation viability. We propose a conceptual model that relates plant population dynamics to habitat quality, configuration and dynamics. In this model, the habitat is arranged as a network of suitable and unsuitable patches,and the distribution of the patches is assumed to be dynamic in time. Based on dispersal and seed bank characteristics four plant strategies are distinguished:species having either long (> 100 m) or short ( 5 yr)or short (