Vegetation ecotones are rich in unique and endemic woody species and can be a focus of community-based conservation areas

ABSTRACT

Biodiversity is heterogeneously distributed across terrestrial landscapes. Although the impacts of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity were well studied, whether ecotones support biodiversity conservation or not is less understood, particularly in Sub-Saharan region. Hence, we compared woody species composition between ecotones and the adjoining vegetation types in Ethiopia. For this, firstly, four vegetation types, which are adjacent to each other at different sites, were selected from the vegetation map of Ethiopia. Secondly, a line transect (620 m in length) was laid out on ecotones at 50 m from the edges of the adjacent vegetation types on both sides. Moreover, transects that are equal in length to the ecotone transects were laid out on the adjoining vegetation types perpendicular to ecotone transects. Plots (size: 20 × 20 m each) were arranged on transects with 100 m interval. In total, from nine sites, 27 transect and 162 plots were used to collect data. The dissimilarity in woody species composition, differences in species richness and indicator species between ecotones and adjacent vegetation types were statistically analyzed. The results showed that woody species composition was dissimilar between ecotones and adjoining vegetation types. The species richness was significantly higher in ecotones when compared with the adjacent vegetation types. Moreover, the number of unique and endemic woody species was higher in ecotones than in adjoining vegetation types. The overall results suggest that ecotones promote plant diversity in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as heterogeneity, and could be the focus of conservation in the face of continuing habitat fragmentation.

KEYWORDS:

• Adjoining vegetation types
• biodiversity
• ecosystems
• ecotones
• Ethiopia
• habitat
• heterogeneity
• in-situ conservation

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Tewoderos Mesganaw, a field technician, from the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute who assisted us during data collection and herbarium specimen handling. Our thanks also go to Haile Gebre for his help in creating a map of the study area using GIS.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Authors contributions

DL and BM designed the study method, DL analyzed data, BM and SA collected and curated data, and DL wrote the draft manuscript.

Data availability statement

The data will be deposited where they can be freely available upon acceptance of the manuscript. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.hdr7sqvkz

Additional information

Funding

The Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute has provided us financial support from the government budget for data collection. However, we did not get any support during the manuscript preparation from any sources and we neither have publication fund.