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Inferring community assembly processes from trait diversity across environmental gradients

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2016

Yong Shen ,
Shi-Xiao Yu ,
Ju-Yu Lian ,
Hao Shen ,
Hong-Lin Cao ,
Huan-Ping Lu  and
Wan-Hui Ye
Yong Shen
Affiliation:
Department of Ecology, School of Life Sciences/State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, PR China
Shi-Xiao Yu*
Affiliation:
Department of Ecology, School of Life Sciences/State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, PR China
Ju-Yu Lian
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, PR China
Hao Shen
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, PR China
Hong-Lin Cao
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, PR China
Huan-Ping Lu
Affiliation:
Ecological Meteorological Center of Guangdong Province, Guangzhou 510640, PR China
Wan-Hui Ye*
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, PR China
*
1Corresponding authors. Email: [email protected], [email protected]
1Corresponding authors. Email: [email protected], [email protected]
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Abstract:

Environmental filtering and competitive interactions are important ecological processes in community assembly. The contribution of the two processes to community assembly can be evaluated by shifts in functional diversity patterns. We examined the correlations between functional diversity of six traits (leaf chlorophyll concentration, dry matter content, size, specific leaf area, thickness and wood density) and environmental gradients (topography and soil) for 92 species in the 20-ha Dinghushan forest plot in China. A partial Mantel test showed that most of the community-weighted mean trait values changed with terrain convexity and soil fertility, which implied that environmental filtering was occurring. Functional diversity of many traits significantly increased with increasing terrain convexity and soil fertility, which was associated with increased light and below-ground resources respectively. These results suggest that co-occurring species are functionally convergent in regions of strong abiotic stress under the environmental filtering, but functionally divergent in more benign environments due to resource partitioning and competitive interactions. Single-trait diversity and multivariate functional diversity had different relationships with environmental factors, indicating that traits were related to different niche axes, and associated with different ecological processes, which demonstrated the importance of focusing niche axes in traits selection. Between 9% and 41% of variation in functional diversity of different traits was explained by environmental factors in stepwise multiple regression models. Terrain convexity and soil fertility were the best predictors of functional diversity, which contributed 30.5% and 29.0% of total R2 to the model. These provided essential evidence that different environmental factors had distinguishing impacts on regulating diversity of traits.

Keywords

community assemblycompetitionenvironmental filteringfunctional diversitytropical forest
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , July 2016 , pp. 290 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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