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Trait-Based Community Assembly along an Elevational Gradient in Subalpine Forests: Quantifying the Roles of Environmental Factors in Inter- and Intraspecific Variability

Understanding how communities respond to environmental variation is a central goal in ecology. Plant communities respond to environmental gradients via intraspecific and/or interspecific variation in plant functional traits. However, the relative contribution of these two responses to environmental...

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Autores principales: Luo, Ya-Huang, Liu, Jie, Tan, Shao-Lin, Cadotte, Marc William, Wang, Yue-Hua, Xu, Kun, Li, De-Zhu, Gao, Lian-Ming
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4871540/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27191402
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0155749
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author Luo, Ya-Huang
Liu, Jie
Tan, Shao-Lin
Cadotte, Marc William
Wang, Yue-Hua
Xu, Kun
Li, De-Zhu
Gao, Lian-Ming
author_facet Luo, Ya-Huang
Liu, Jie
Tan, Shao-Lin
Cadotte, Marc William
Wang, Yue-Hua
Xu, Kun
Li, De-Zhu
Gao, Lian-Ming
author_sort Luo, Ya-Huang
collection PubMed
description Understanding how communities respond to environmental variation is a central goal in ecology. Plant communities respond to environmental gradients via intraspecific and/or interspecific variation in plant functional traits. However, the relative contribution of these two responses to environmental factors remains poorly tested. We measured six functional traits (height, leaf thickness, specific leaf area (SLA), leaf carbon concentration (LCC), leaf nitrogen concentration (LNC) and leaf phosphorus concentration (LPC)) for 55 tree species occurring at five elevations across a 1200 m elevational gradient of subalpine forests in Yulong Mountain, Southwest China. We examined the relative contribution of interspecific and intraspecific traits variability based on community weighted mean trait values and functional diversity, and tested how different components of trait variation respond to different environmental axes (climate and soil variables). Species turnover explained the largest amount of variation in leaf morphological traits (leaf thickness and SLA) across the elevational gradient. However, intraspecific variability explained a large amount of variation (49.3%–76.3%) in three other traits (height, LNC and LPC) despite high levels of species turnover. The detection of limiting similarity in community assembly was improved when accounting for both intraspecific and interspecific variability. Different components of trait variation respond to different environmental axes, especially soil water content and climatic variables. Our results indicate that intraspecific variation is critical for understanding community assembly and evaluating community response to environmental change.
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spelling pubmed-48715402016-05-31 Trait-Based Community Assembly along an Elevational Gradient in Subalpine Forests: Quantifying the Roles of Environmental Factors in Inter- and Intraspecific Variability Luo, Ya-Huang Liu, Jie Tan, Shao-Lin Cadotte, Marc William Wang, Yue-Hua Xu, Kun Li, De-Zhu Gao, Lian-Ming PLoS One Research Article Understanding how communities respond to environmental variation is a central goal in ecology. Plant communities respond to environmental gradients via intraspecific and/or interspecific variation in plant functional traits. However, the relative contribution of these two responses to environmental factors remains poorly tested. We measured six functional traits (height, leaf thickness, specific leaf area (SLA), leaf carbon concentration (LCC), leaf nitrogen concentration (LNC) and leaf phosphorus concentration (LPC)) for 55 tree species occurring at five elevations across a 1200 m elevational gradient of subalpine forests in Yulong Mountain, Southwest China. We examined the relative contribution of interspecific and intraspecific traits variability based on community weighted mean trait values and functional diversity, and tested how different components of trait variation respond to different environmental axes (climate and soil variables). Species turnover explained the largest amount of variation in leaf morphological traits (leaf thickness and SLA) across the elevational gradient. However, intraspecific variability explained a large amount of variation (49.3%–76.3%) in three other traits (height, LNC and LPC) despite high levels of species turnover. The detection of limiting similarity in community assembly was improved when accounting for both intraspecific and interspecific variability. Different components of trait variation respond to different environmental axes, especially soil water content and climatic variables. Our results indicate that intraspecific variation is critical for understanding community assembly and evaluating community response to environmental change. Public Library of Science 2016-05-18 /pmc/articles/PMC4871540/ /pubmed/27191402 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0155749 Text en © 2016 Luo et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Luo, Ya-Huang
Liu, Jie
Tan, Shao-Lin
Cadotte, Marc William
Wang, Yue-Hua
Xu, Kun
Li, De-Zhu
Gao, Lian-Ming
Trait-Based Community Assembly along an Elevational Gradient in Subalpine Forests: Quantifying the Roles of Environmental Factors in Inter- and Intraspecific Variability
title Trait-Based Community Assembly along an Elevational Gradient in Subalpine Forests: Quantifying the Roles of Environmental Factors in Inter- and Intraspecific Variability
title_full Trait-Based Community Assembly along an Elevational Gradient in Subalpine Forests: Quantifying the Roles of Environmental Factors in Inter- and Intraspecific Variability
title_fullStr Trait-Based Community Assembly along an Elevational Gradient in Subalpine Forests: Quantifying the Roles of Environmental Factors in Inter- and Intraspecific Variability
title_full_unstemmed Trait-Based Community Assembly along an Elevational Gradient in Subalpine Forests: Quantifying the Roles of Environmental Factors in Inter- and Intraspecific Variability
title_short Trait-Based Community Assembly along an Elevational Gradient in Subalpine Forests: Quantifying the Roles of Environmental Factors in Inter- and Intraspecific Variability
title_sort trait-based community assembly along an elevational gradient in subalpine forests: quantifying the roles of environmental factors in inter- and intraspecific variability
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4871540/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27191402
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0155749
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