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Trait variation and functional diversity maintenance of understory herbaceous species coexisting along an elevational gradient in Yulong Mountain, Southwest China
Characterizing trait variation across different ecological scales in plant communities has been viewed as a way to gain insights into the mechanisms driving species coexistence. However, little is known about how changes in intraspecific and interspecific traits across sites influence species richne...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
KeAi Publishing
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6112257/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30159482 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pld.2016.11.002 |
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author | Luo, Yahuang Liu, Jie Tan, Shaolin Cadotte, Marc W. Xu, Kun Gao, Lianming Li, Dezhu |
author_facet | Luo, Yahuang Liu, Jie Tan, Shaolin Cadotte, Marc W. Xu, Kun Gao, Lianming Li, Dezhu |
author_sort | Luo, Yahuang |
collection | PubMed |
description | Characterizing trait variation across different ecological scales in plant communities has been viewed as a way to gain insights into the mechanisms driving species coexistence. However, little is known about how changes in intraspecific and interspecific traits across sites influence species richness and community assembly, especially in understory herbaceous communities. Here we partitioned the variance of four functional traits (maximum height, leaf thickness, leaf area and specific leaf area) across four nested biological scales: individual, species, plot, and elevation to quantify the scale-dependent distributions of understory herbaceous trait variance. We also integrated the comparison of the trait variance ratios to null models to investigate the effects of different ecological processes on community assembly and functional diversity along a 1200-m elevational gradient in Yulong Mountain. We found interspecific trait variation was the main trait variation component for leaf traits, although intraspecific trait variation ranged from 10% to 28% of total variation. In particular, maximum height exhibited high plasticity, and intraspecific variation accounted for 44% of the total variation. Despite the fact that species composition varied across elevation and species richness decreased dramatically along the elevational gradient, there was little variance at our largest (elevation) scale in leaf traits and functional diversity remained constant along the elevational gradient, indicating that traits responded to smaller scale influences. External filtering was only observed at high elevations. However, strong internal filtering was detected along the entire elevational gradient in understory herbaceous communities, possibly due to competition. Our results provide evidence that species coexistence in understory herbaceous communities might be structured by differential niche-assembled processes. This approach –– integrating different biological scales of trait variation –– may provide a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in the structure of communities. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6112257 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | KeAi Publishing |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-61122572018-08-29 Trait variation and functional diversity maintenance of understory herbaceous species coexisting along an elevational gradient in Yulong Mountain, Southwest China Luo, Yahuang Liu, Jie Tan, Shaolin Cadotte, Marc W. Xu, Kun Gao, Lianming Li, Dezhu Plant Divers Article Characterizing trait variation across different ecological scales in plant communities has been viewed as a way to gain insights into the mechanisms driving species coexistence. However, little is known about how changes in intraspecific and interspecific traits across sites influence species richness and community assembly, especially in understory herbaceous communities. Here we partitioned the variance of four functional traits (maximum height, leaf thickness, leaf area and specific leaf area) across four nested biological scales: individual, species, plot, and elevation to quantify the scale-dependent distributions of understory herbaceous trait variance. We also integrated the comparison of the trait variance ratios to null models to investigate the effects of different ecological processes on community assembly and functional diversity along a 1200-m elevational gradient in Yulong Mountain. We found interspecific trait variation was the main trait variation component for leaf traits, although intraspecific trait variation ranged from 10% to 28% of total variation. In particular, maximum height exhibited high plasticity, and intraspecific variation accounted for 44% of the total variation. Despite the fact that species composition varied across elevation and species richness decreased dramatically along the elevational gradient, there was little variance at our largest (elevation) scale in leaf traits and functional diversity remained constant along the elevational gradient, indicating that traits responded to smaller scale influences. External filtering was only observed at high elevations. However, strong internal filtering was detected along the entire elevational gradient in understory herbaceous communities, possibly due to competition. Our results provide evidence that species coexistence in understory herbaceous communities might be structured by differential niche-assembled processes. This approach –– integrating different biological scales of trait variation –– may provide a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in the structure of communities. KeAi Publishing 2016-11-15 /pmc/articles/PMC6112257/ /pubmed/30159482 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pld.2016.11.002 Text en © 2016 Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Luo, Yahuang Liu, Jie Tan, Shaolin Cadotte, Marc W. Xu, Kun Gao, Lianming Li, Dezhu Trait variation and functional diversity maintenance of understory herbaceous species coexisting along an elevational gradient in Yulong Mountain, Southwest China |
title | Trait variation and functional diversity maintenance of understory herbaceous species coexisting along an elevational gradient in Yulong Mountain, Southwest China |
title_full | Trait variation and functional diversity maintenance of understory herbaceous species coexisting along an elevational gradient in Yulong Mountain, Southwest China |
title_fullStr | Trait variation and functional diversity maintenance of understory herbaceous species coexisting along an elevational gradient in Yulong Mountain, Southwest China |
title_full_unstemmed | Trait variation and functional diversity maintenance of understory herbaceous species coexisting along an elevational gradient in Yulong Mountain, Southwest China |
title_short | Trait variation and functional diversity maintenance of understory herbaceous species coexisting along an elevational gradient in Yulong Mountain, Southwest China |
title_sort | trait variation and functional diversity maintenance of understory herbaceous species coexisting along an elevational gradient in yulong mountain, southwest china |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6112257/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30159482 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pld.2016.11.002 |
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