Determination of functional diversity of Mediterranean plants and evaluation by analytical methods according to environmental variables (Sarıkaya YGHS example)

Functional diversity, known as organismal characteristics that affect the functioning of ecosystems, is an impotant informative biodiversity component about complex ecosystem processes. The main purpose of this study is to determine the functional properties of plant species distributed in the Mediterranean and to evaluate the relationships between environmental variables and plant functional diversity. In this context, Sarıkaya Wildlife Development Area (Antalya) and its surroundings, which contains all the Mediterranean vegetation layers and has an extremely rich plant diversity, were chosen as the study area. A total of 100 sample areas were evaluated with 50-day field studies carried out between the years 2021-2022. Totally, 3500-4000 plant specimens were collected from these areas and the presence of 920 taxa (883 species) was determined. During the field studies, the environmental variables of the sample areas and the coverage area (abundance) values of the taxa distributed in the sample area were recorded. Within the scope of the study, functional diversity was evaluated under two different values as indirect (FD(1)) and direct (FD(2)). FD(1) is calculated by taking into account the endemism values and incidence rates of Taxa, and it has been determined that FD(1) is related to species richness, Mediterranean vegetation layer, elevation, bedrock, valley depth and topographic position index variables. According to the results, the incidence rate of the species is more important than the endemism value in determining the FD(1) value. Functional diversity is more likely associated with the functional traits of species rather than their taxonomic identity. In this respect, 8 functional features related to the vegetative and regenerative characters of the plants are evaluated. These evaluations show that the FD(2) value is related to species richness, habitat type, Mediterranean vegetation layer, altitude, roughness, average temperature, average precipitation, solar illumination and valley depth variables. can be specified as altitude and rugged karst topography. It has been supported by the obtained results that adaptations to drought in Mediterranean plants are also factors that increase the functional diversity values. In addition, it has been demonstrated that FD(1) is more useful than species richness in comparative biodiversity studies.