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Community assembly along a successional chronosequence in the northern tropical karst mountains, South China

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Abstract

Background and aims

Insight for vegetation restoration in karst mountains could come from understanding the methods by which communities are built along a successional chronosequence. We integrated species diversity, phylogenetic structure, and functional trait diversity to investigate the mechanisms governing community assembly along a successional chronosequence in the northern tropical karst mountains, South China.

Methods

Five successional sequences, including grassland, shrubland, young forest, middle-aged forest, and primary forest, were selected in the northern tropical karst mountains using the space-for-time substitution method. The relationships between species diversity and environmental variables (elevation, slope degree and rock exposed rate) were investigated using redundancy analysis and variance partitioning methods.

Results and discussion

Our results showed that as succession progressed, species and phylogenetic diversity showed an increasing trend, then a decreasing trend, with the maximum value occurring in young forests, which displayed the optimum curves over the successional gradient. In terms of functional diversity, shrubland, and young forest had significantly higher functional richness than grassland and middle-aged forest, and grassland and young forest had significantly higher quadratic entropy coefficients than primary forest. The vegetative community changed in phylogenetic structure from clustering in the early stages of succession to diverging in the late stages.In contrast, the leaf thickness density decreased as succession progressed, suggesting that the young forest vegetation had the highest resource acquisition ability and utilization rate as the successional progressed. Additionally, the chlorophyll content, leaf thickness, and leaf area showed a first increased then decreased trend as successional progressed.

Conclusions

Our results suggest that due to harsher soil conditions, the vegetation in early successional stage was dominated by environmental filtering (i.e., limitation of environmental resources), whereas the vegetation in late successional stage was governed by competitive exclusion (i.e., species competition). Our findings can guide plants conservation and ecological restoration in the tropical karst regions.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Guangxi Natural Science Foundation (2021GXNSFFA196005; 2021GXNSFAA196024), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31960275; 31760128), the Natural Science Foundation of Hainan (422QN264), and the start-up funding from Hainan University [KYQD(ZR)-22085].

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Author notes

  1. Ruiyu Fu and Licong Dai contributed equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Wildlife Evolution and Conservation in Mountain Ecosystem of Guangxi, Nanning Normal University, Nanning, 530100, China

    Ruiyu Fu, Zhonghua Zhang & Gang Hu

  2. Key Laboratory of Agro-Forestry Environmental Processes and Ecological Regulation of Hainan Province, Hainan University, Haikou, 570228, China

    Ruiyu Fu & Licong Dai

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  1. Ruiyu Fu
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  2. Licong Dai
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Correspondence to Gang Hu.

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Fu, R., Dai, L., Zhang, Z. et al. Community assembly along a successional chronosequence in the northern tropical karst mountains, South China. Plant Soil 491, 317–331 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-06118-z

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