An alpine plant community form by species such as Potentilla crantzii, Festuca gautieri subsp. scoparia,Thymus serpyllum and Galium pyrenaicum at 2500 m a.s.l. in front of the Monte Perdido Peak (the central Spanish Pyrenees). Photo by Jesús López-Angulo.

The alpine plant communities of Ordesa and Monte Perdido National Park, are subject to a strong regional abiotic filtering produced by the integration of low temperature, limestone substrate and periglacial processes. As a consequence, there is small variation in vegetative and reproductive traits. Despite these communities are very species-rich (up to 15 species / m2) and show high levels of species turnover, the functional diversity observed in the local assemblages is not different from than expected by chance. However, a comparative analysis of increasingly restricted null models shed light on the weak signal from local processes and reveal the importance of both fine-scale abiotic variation and biotic interactions.

Full paper here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.05405

 

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