How biyearly mowing and Brachypodium rupestre’s features affects plant community

Land‐use cessation in sub‐Mediterranean grasslands causes the spread of dominant unpalatable tall grasses, causing a drop in the biodiversity and affecting ecosystem functioning (Louault et al. 2002). Mowing is known to increase plant diversity after invasion (Bonanomi et al. 2006) but the mechanisms acting at fine scale are poorly investigated. This research was aimed to understand the effect of biyearly mowing events and variation of Brachypodium rupestre’s plant height and phytomass on the fine scale functional composition of a grassland invaded by B. rupestre. Since 2010 in Central Apennines, we fenced a grassland invaded by B. rupestre, and we divided it in two blocks, half of each mowed biyearly and half unmown. In 2017 we selected twenty 20 x 20 cm plots per block, collecting data on species occurrences, B. rupestre height, and phytomass. We selected traits related to life history, plant architecture, seed mass, vegetative propagation, storage organ, leaf anatomy and phenology. We performed linear mixed‐effects models to investigate the effect of B. rupestre plant height and phytomass and recurrent mowing on functional composition of the community. Overall, recurrent mowing and changes of B. rupestre features affects the plant community at micro‐scale leading to changes in their functional composition. Recurrent mowing fosters the spread of avoidance strategy species (e.g. annual life span) and tolerance strategies species as well (e.g. clonal strategy). Increasing of B. rupestre height promotes temporal phenological shift of the coexistence species and foster the presence of taller species, more able to compete for light acquisition (Lepš 2014).