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A six-year grazing exclusion changed plant species diversity of a Stipa breviflora desert steppe community, northern China

Excluding grazers is one of most efficient ways to restore degraded grasslands in desert-steppe communities, but may negatively affect the recovery of plant species diversity. However, diversity differences between grazed and fenced grasslands in desert-steppe are poorly known. In a Stipa breviflora...

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Autores principales: Wang, Xing, Yang, Xinguo, Wang, Lei, Chen, Lin, Song, Naiping, Gu, Junlong, Xue, Yi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5815336/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29456890
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4359
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author Wang, Xing
Yang, Xinguo
Wang, Lei
Chen, Lin
Song, Naiping
Gu, Junlong
Xue, Yi
author_facet Wang, Xing
Yang, Xinguo
Wang, Lei
Chen, Lin
Song, Naiping
Gu, Junlong
Xue, Yi
author_sort Wang, Xing
collection PubMed
description Excluding grazers is one of most efficient ways to restore degraded grasslands in desert-steppe communities, but may negatively affect the recovery of plant species diversity. However, diversity differences between grazed and fenced grasslands in desert-steppe are poorly known. In a Stipa breviflora desert steppe community in Northern China, we established six plots to examine spatial patterns of plant species diversity under grazed and fenced conditions, respectively. We addressed three aspects of species diversity: (1) The logistic, exponential and power models were used to describe the species-area curve (SAR). Species richness, abundance and Shannon diversity values change differently with increasing sampling areas inside and outside of the fence. The best fitted model for SAR was the logistic model. Excluding grazers had a significant impact on the shape of SAR. (2) Variograms was applied to examine the spatial characteristics of plant species diversity. We found strong spatial autocorrelations in the diversity variables both inside and outside the fence. After grazing exclusion, the spatial heterogeneity decreased in species richness, increased in abundance and did not change in Shannon diversity. (3) We used variance partitioning to determine the relative contributions of spatial and environmental factors to plant species diversity patterns. Environmental factors explained the largest proportion of variation in species diversity, while spatial factors contributed little. Our results suggest that grazing enclosures decreased species diversity patterns and the spatial pattern of the S. breviflora desert steppe community was predictable.
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spelling pubmed-58153362018-02-16 A six-year grazing exclusion changed plant species diversity of a Stipa breviflora desert steppe community, northern China Wang, Xing Yang, Xinguo Wang, Lei Chen, Lin Song, Naiping Gu, Junlong Xue, Yi PeerJ Biodiversity Excluding grazers is one of most efficient ways to restore degraded grasslands in desert-steppe communities, but may negatively affect the recovery of plant species diversity. However, diversity differences between grazed and fenced grasslands in desert-steppe are poorly known. In a Stipa breviflora desert steppe community in Northern China, we established six plots to examine spatial patterns of plant species diversity under grazed and fenced conditions, respectively. We addressed three aspects of species diversity: (1) The logistic, exponential and power models were used to describe the species-area curve (SAR). Species richness, abundance and Shannon diversity values change differently with increasing sampling areas inside and outside of the fence. The best fitted model for SAR was the logistic model. Excluding grazers had a significant impact on the shape of SAR. (2) Variograms was applied to examine the spatial characteristics of plant species diversity. We found strong spatial autocorrelations in the diversity variables both inside and outside the fence. After grazing exclusion, the spatial heterogeneity decreased in species richness, increased in abundance and did not change in Shannon diversity. (3) We used variance partitioning to determine the relative contributions of spatial and environmental factors to plant species diversity patterns. Environmental factors explained the largest proportion of variation in species diversity, while spatial factors contributed little. Our results suggest that grazing enclosures decreased species diversity patterns and the spatial pattern of the S. breviflora desert steppe community was predictable. PeerJ Inc. 2018-02-13 /pmc/articles/PMC5815336/ /pubmed/29456890 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4359 Text en ©2018 Wang 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, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Biodiversity
Wang, Xing
Yang, Xinguo
Wang, Lei
Chen, Lin
Song, Naiping
Gu, Junlong
Xue, Yi
A six-year grazing exclusion changed plant species diversity of a Stipa breviflora desert steppe community, northern China
title A six-year grazing exclusion changed plant species diversity of a Stipa breviflora desert steppe community, northern China
title_full A six-year grazing exclusion changed plant species diversity of a Stipa breviflora desert steppe community, northern China
title_fullStr A six-year grazing exclusion changed plant species diversity of a Stipa breviflora desert steppe community, northern China
title_full_unstemmed A six-year grazing exclusion changed plant species diversity of a Stipa breviflora desert steppe community, northern China
title_short A six-year grazing exclusion changed plant species diversity of a Stipa breviflora desert steppe community, northern China
title_sort six-year grazing exclusion changed plant species diversity of a stipa breviflora desert steppe community, northern china
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5815336/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29456890
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4359
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