Functional Traits of Plant Species Colonizing Gaps in Forest Ecosystems

Plant functional traits can be a useful tool for studying the response of plant species to changes in the environment. In our research we analyzed changes in plant functional traits and in life form according to the age of forest gap and thus to the individual successional stage. Our research was done at five forest gaps in Dinaric fir–beech forest in Slovenia. The forest gaps were created as a result of natural disturbances but were in different successional stage. For the analyze we choose main 18 functional plant traits, whose values were obtained from the BiolFlor database. With the help of the JUICE program, we calculated the frequency of occurrence individual forest gaps for each functional plant trait. Then, we calculated Spearman’s correlation coefficient at p < 0.05 between the occurrence of individual functional plant traits and each forest gap. The forest gap, which statistically differed from the others in the most functional plant traits (16), was the youngest one. Our research showed that colonizing plant species are primarily those that start flowering in June and July, and flower at least two months, are pollinated by insects, mainly hover flies and wild bees. This colonizing plant species reproduce via seeds or spores and vegetatively. They mostly belong to the perennials and herbaceous perennials and chamaephytes.