Structured Monitoring of Wild Flora in France Demonstrates 15 Years of Plant Community Changes Related to Climate Change and Pollinator Loss

Abstract

Standardised long-term biodiversity monitoring schemes, based on repeated visits to fixed sites, offer the possibility of comparing biodiversity in space and time, while avoiding most of the biases associated with opportunistic data, particularly when the monitored sites are a representative (random) sample of ecosystems. When information on abundance is collected, standardized monitoring enables the detection of subtle temporal changes in populations, species and communities.

In France, Vigie-flore is such a standardized monitoring scheme targeting wild flora launched in 2009, involving amateur and professional botanists to survey plant communities across all habitat types. The monitoring data have revealed an ongoing, nationwide reshuffling of plant communities in response to climate change, but also a decline of common insect-pollinated species over the last decade, with consequences for community composition. These studies contribute to highlighting rapid changes in wild flora on a national scale and identifying plausible mechanisms. We will discuss the direct implications for conservation and the perspectives of this plant monitoring scheme.

Gabrielle Martin

I am an associate professor in botany and plant community ecology at Toulouse University and at the Centre de Recherche sur la Biodiversité et l'Environnement since 2021. Previously a post-doctoral researcher in plant community ecology at the Centre des Sciences de la Conservation (CESCO) at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle and at the Institut Méditerranéen de Biodiversité et d'Ecologie after a PhD in ecology (MNHN). I study how, and with what intensity, the various components of global change affect the composition of plant communities and changes in species abundance, using trait-based approaches and spatio-temporal analyses. My current research focuses on the impacts of global change on wild flora, the links between temporal trends in species and plant life history traits, the detection of syndromes in the response of species and groups of species, and the identification of the spatial heterogeneity of threats to flora. I am teaching botany, plant biology and plant ecology at university at undergraduate and postgraduate level.