Anadolu Bozkır Bitkilerinin Fonksiyonel Karakter Örüntüleri

Abstract

The steppe is a vegetation type growing throughout the most of Anatolia, consisted of perennial plants with low height and adapted to drought,. The geographical area where Anatolian steppes are found overlaps with the Iran-Anatolian biodiversity hotspot and has a great species diversity and endemism drğven by its topographic and climatic diversity. Functional trait approach, which is frequently used in vegetation studies in recent years, provides important facilities for scientists in ecological and evolutionary biology researches and in our understanding the dynamics of ecosystems. Threfore, there is a need for functional trait databases, and there is an important gap in the literature regarding the functional trait patterns of Anatolian steppe plants. In this study, to fill this gap and to be a source for future studies, it is aimed to construct a database containing functional trait patterns of the Anatolian steppe vegetation by using the Flora of Turkey and East Aegean Islands by Davis. Traits that can give information about the life stories of plants such as height, growth form, spinescence, fruit type, leaf shape and leaf area were compiled from the Flora book, and finally a database containing functional trait records belonging to 75 families, 584 genera and 3198 taxa was created. As a result of the analyzes made using the database, steppe plants were found to have usually perennial herbaceous growth form, with an average height of 59 cm, clonability, dry fruit type, mostly yellow or white flowers. It has been seen that many steppe plants have spines against disturbances such as grazing, which are effective in shaping the trait structure of plants. With this study, the functional trait structure of steppe plants has been revealed in the light of the available data. Further development of the database will allow more comprehensive studies to be carried out. In this respect, a new perspective has been put forward to investigate the Anatolian steppes and the gaps in the literature have been tried to be eliminated.