Abstract
Changes in the amount and timing of precipitation may affect plant species coexistence. However, little is known about how these changes in precipitation structure plant communities. Here, we conducted a 6-year field precipitation manipulation experiment in the semi-arid steppe of Inner Mongolia, China, to assess the importance of species extinction and colonization in community assembly by incorporating information on phylogenetic and functional relatedness. Our results demonstrated that the decline in plant species richness under decreasing precipitation in the late and entire growing season could be attributed to a decrease in species colonization and an increase in species loss, respectively. The increase in species richness under increasing precipitation in the late growing season was mainly caused by increases in colonizing species. The loss of species that were more closely related to other residents under decreasing precipitation in the late growing season did not alter patterns of phylogenetic overdispersion, and the colonization of species that were more distantly related to residents under increasing precipitation in the late growing season shifted functional relatedness from clustering to randomness. Increasing precipitation may weaken the strength of environmental filtering induced by water stress in this semi-arid steppe and thus increase the probability of successful colonization of functionally dissimilar species relative to residents. Our study suggests that incorporating information on the functional and phylogenetic relatedness of locally lost resident species and the colonization of new species into analyses of community assembly processes can provide new insights into the general responses of plant communities to global change.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Jiajia Zhang, Xiaoxin Qiao, and many others for assistance in both the field and lab. This study was funded by Key project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (32130066), Natural Science Foundation of Henan Province, China (202300410082 and 222300420108), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (32201333 and 32271645).
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YZL and LGY conceived and designed the experiments. WMM and YJW performed the experiments. XR, SYF, and MC analyzed the data. YZL wrote the paper. ZT and LGY provided editorial advice.
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Communicated by Douglas A Frank.
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Yang, Z., Wang, M., Yang, J. et al. The effect of precipitation timing on phylogenetic and functional community structure in a semi-arid steppe. Oecologia 201, 173–182 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-022-05298-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-022-05298-2