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Disentangling the relative effects of ambient energy, water availability, and energy–water balance on pteridophyte species richness at a landscape scale in China

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Abstract

Understanding what factors generate geographic variation in species richness is a fundamental goal of ecology and biogeography. Water and energy are considered as the major environmental factors influencing large-scale patterns of species richness, but their roles vary among taxa and regions. Pteridophytes are an ideal group of organisms for examining the relationship between species richness and their environment because the distribution of pteridophytes is usually in equilibrium with contemporary climate to a greater degree than those of seed plants and most terrestrial vertebrates partly due to the lightness of their spores, which is highly capable of long-distance dispersal by wind, and partly due to their single-spore reproduction strategy. Using correlation and regression analyses and structural equation modeling technique, we examine the relationship of pteridophyte species richness in 151 localities from across China with environmental factors representing energy, water, and energy–water balance. We found that pteridophyte species richness is correlated to water availability more strongly than to ambient energy. Furthermore, we found that of all environmental variables considered, energy–water balance has played the most important role in regulating pteridophyte species richness gradients in China.

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Acknowledgments

We thank anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. This project is supported by a grant from the Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. HQ is supported by NSF grant DEB-0640058.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research and Collections Center, Illinois State Museum, 1011 East Ash Street, Springfield, IL, 62703, USA

    Hong Qian

  2. Huitong Experimental Station of Forest Ecology, State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110164, China

    Hong Qian, Silong Wang & Yuanliang Li

  3. Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 11A Datun Road, Beijing, 100101, China

    Ming Xiao

  4. Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, 751 General Service Building, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2H1, Canada

    Xianli Wang

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  1. Hong Qian
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  2. Silong Wang
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  3. Yuanliang Li
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  4. Ming Xiao
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  5. Xianli Wang
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Correspondence to Hong Qian.

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Qian, H., Wang, S., Li, Y. et al. Disentangling the relative effects of ambient energy, water availability, and energy–water balance on pteridophyte species richness at a landscape scale in China. Plant Ecol 213, 749–756 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-012-0038-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-012-0038-0

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