Shifts of arable plant communities after agricultural intensification: a floristic and ecological diachronic analysis in maize fields of Latium (central Italy)

ABSTRACT

Changes in agricultural practices represent one of the main causes of shift in species composition of arable plant communities. In particular, the intensification of agriculture going on worldwide since several decades led to heavy transformations of arable plant diversity. Basing on a study conducted in 1964 in Latium (central Italy), we re-surveyed the arable plant communities of 21 maize fields in order to assess the shifts that occurred over 50 years. The results showed a relevant decrease in the number of species (both in the total number and in the mean number per relevé), accompanied by a major species turnover. An increase in neophyte, wide-distribution, geophyte, C4 photosynthetic pathway, and monocot species was observed, while the incidence of insect-pollinated taxa decreased. The calculation of the mean Ellenberg indicator values per relevé showed an increase, in particular, of nutrients and moisture levels.

KEYWORDS:

• Alien species
• arable flora
• bioindication
• biodiversity loss
• intensive agriculture
• neophytes
• weeds
• Zea mays

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the student G. Ferrante for his support in fieldwork and the staff of the Herbarium RO (Sapienza University of Rome) for the assistance in the consultation of exsiccata during species identification. We also ought to thank the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for considerably improving the manuscript through their comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

The present research has been funded by Sapienza University of Rome [Progetto Avvio AR11715C3A721774].

Notes on contributors

Emanuele Fanfarillo

Emanuele Fanfarillo is a PhD student in botany at La Sapienza University; he does research on plant diversity in traditional agroecosystems at different levels. He carried out the field sampling, identified the species, performed the floristic, ecological, part of the statistical analyses, and wrote the manuscript.

Andrzej Kasperski

Andrzej Kasperski is a doctor in chemical technology and a master in computer science; he works on control of bioprocesses, cellular bioenergetics, genetic variation and organism evolution. He collaborated to data analyses and to the writing of the article.

Alessandro Giuliani

Alessandro Giuliani is a Senior Scientist at Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italian NIH); his research deals with mathematical and physical model of biological systems. He carried out the INDVAL-based correlation analysis and collaborated in the writing of the article.

Giovanna Abbate

Giovanna Abbate is an Associate Professor of Systematic Botany and Phytogeography at La Sapienza University; she currently studies the plant diversity of traditional agroecosystems. She supervised the whole research and critically revised the manuscript.