Fig 1.
Location of the study sites on the Fleurieu Peninsula.
The small inset map illustrates the location of the Fleurieu Peninsula in Australia.
Fig 2.
The grass tree, Xanthorrhoea semiplana F.Muell. (Xanthorrhoeaceae).
The senescent leaves (brown colour) usually form a closed cavity, in which microsensors were placed. Red scale bar is approximately 1 m in length.
Table 1.
Locations of study sites with types of microhabitats surveyed, species richness and percentage canopy cover of fourteen 400m2 plots.
Fig 3.
Hourly temperature and relative humidity data for a 48 hour period (from 12am on 31 December 2015 to 12 am on 2 January 2016) for microsensors in the three microhabitats at Scott Conservation Park, site SCE.
Fig 4.
Box plots showing the median (centre lines of boxes), first and third quartiles (lower and upper box boundaries, respectively) and highest and lowest values of daytime a) temperature and b) relative humidity for the three microhabitats in six sites over three summer months from 1 December 2015 to 29 February 2016.
Micohabitat codes: BC = ground-below-canopy microhabitat (0.5 m above the ground), GT = in the cavity formed by the senescent leaves of a grass tree, Xanthorrhoea semiplana F.Muell. (Xanthorrhoeaceae); LL = in the leaf litter. See Table 1 for site codes.
Table 2.
Average, mean daily variation and mean daytime and nighttime moderation (italics: day; night) of temperature (°C, with standard deviation) for three microhabitats (ground-below-canopy, under grass-tree, in leaf-litter) of 14 study sites on the Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia.
Table 3.
Average, mean variation and mean daytime and nighttime moderation (italics: day; night) of percentage relative humidity (with standard deviation) for three microhabitats (ground-below-canopy, under grass-tree, in leaf-litter) of 14 study sites on the Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia
Table 4.
Best generalised linear mixed-effect models (GLMMs) explaining average temperature, average humidity, and average variation in temperature with microhabitat type as the only random effect, showing only significant fixed effects.
Fig 5.
Average daytime temperature buffering (compared to the ground-below-canopy microhabitat in the same location) provided by eight grass-tree (symbols, dashed trendlines) and eleven leaf-litter (shapes, dotted trendlines) microhabitats over 92 days during the 2015/2016 summer in vegetation fragments in the Fleurieu Peninsula.
Regression lines were fitted using the method of least squares, assuming a linear relationship. There was no significant difference between the means of the slopes in the two microhabitats (t = 0.894; d.f. = 17; p = 0.192).
Table 5.
Best linear models explaining average daytime temperature buffering (compared to the ground-below-canopy microhabitat in the same location) for grass-tree and leaf-litter microhabitats, including only significant variables.