Master Thesis

Eine Analyse funktioneller Merkmale der mitteleuropäischen Flora

Anna Hofmann (01/2023-06/2023)

Support: Carl Beierkuhnlein, Anna Walentowitz

In Europe and worldwide, losses and endangerment of plant species are increasing, partly simultaneously with the expansion of transnational species conservation agreements and species-specific management measures. In recent years, several intra-European studies have illustrated that various plant functional traits significantly influence extinction risk as well as species endangerment. This present document addresses the question whether functional characteristics play a role in species endangerment within the fern and flowering plant species of Germany. For this purpose, 2,089 ("Plant reproductive phenology time") and 2,174 ("Plant height vegetative") fern and flowering plant species of Germany were analyzed based on two functional plant traits, starting from the Red List categories. Information on species characteristics was obtained from the international database TRY (Kattge et al. 2020). Highly significant correlations were found between both functional traits and endangerment classification. Comparison with species in the Endangered and Forewarned categories shows that Highly Endangered and Endangered species are smaller and have a shorter flowering period. For both tested FPTs, a clear negative trend is evident according to which the risk of extinction increases with decreasing growth height or flowering duration. The results indicate that there are non-random processes based on the FPT "Plant reproductive phenology time " and "Plant height vegetative" that influence the endangerment of plant species in the Red List categories. In particular, smaller and shorter flowering species are less competitive and less able to compensate for environmental changes. Since especially highly endangered and endangered plant species can have several endangerment- promoting trait expressions, the consideration of functional plant traits in combination with other endangerment assessments should be anchored in nature and species conservation as well as in the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 in the future.