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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...

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Autores principales: Luo, Yahuang, Liu, Jie, Tan, Shaolin, Cadotte, Marc W., Xu, Kun, Gao, Lianming, Li, Dezhu
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: KeAi Publishing 2016
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.
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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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