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Biological traits are correlated with elevational distribution range of eastern Tibetan herbaceous species

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Abstract

Plants that share the same habitat often exhibit similar biological traits. As climatic conditions change with increasing elevation, biological traits are expected to vary among plant species with temperate endemic, alpine endemic, or widespread elevational distributions. On a northeast Tibetan flora including temperate (1,850–2,800 m a.s.l.), subalpine (2,800–3,400 m a.s.l.), and alpine (3,400–4,150 m a.s.l.) vegetations, we analyzed patterns of change for ten traits of 326 annual and perennial herbaceous species using both univariate and multivariate analyses. The traits selected for this study fit in different groups, i.e., traits related to light competition, photosynthesis, reproduction, defense, and dispersal. We found that plant shape (plant height and leaf distribution along stem) and leaf traits (specific leaf area and leaf area) were significant predictors of plants’ elevational distributions, suggesting an important role for a trade-off between light competition and biomass costs in support structures, and between photosynthetic efficiency and leaf defense. Moreover, species with a broad distribution had significantly higher seed germination and shorter first germination time, as compared to species with narrow distributions, which indicates that rapid regeneration may be crucial for widespread species. However, dispersal-related traits may not be the main factor in shaping plants’ elevational distribution because no significant difference was detected in wind- and animal-dispersal ability. In addition, annual species potentially may have different strategies and adaptive mechanisms because we detected no differences in trait related to the elevational distributions.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Philippe Choler, Dr. Shiting Zhang, Dr. Xuelin Chen, Dr. Yifeng Wang, Dr. Zhigang Zhao, Dr. Hui Guo, Shuqing Guo, Min Yang, and Mei Su for their advice or help with field work. We specially thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions. The study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China granted to Guozhen Du (41171214), Haiyan Bu (41171046), and Wenjin Li (31100306), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities granted to Wei Qi (lzujbky-2014-94).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agroecosystems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, People’s Republic of China

    Wei Qi, Haiyan Bu, Kun Liu, Wenjin Li, Wenlong Li & Guozhen Du

  2. School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, 68588-0118, USA

    Johannes M. H. Knops

  3. Department of Biology, Hanshan Normal University, Chaozhou, 521041, People’s Republic of China

    Juhong Wang

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  1. Wei Qi
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Correspondence to Guozhen Du.

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Communicated by K. -F. Cao.

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Online Appendix 1

The methods of biological trait measurement (DOC 37 kb)

Online Appendix 2

List of 326 species and their biological traits. LF life form (1: annual herbs; 2: perennial herbs), PH (cm) plant height, SM (mg) seed mass, SLA (cm2/g) specific leaf area, LA (cm2) leaf area, LI leaf index, LD leaf distribution, AGT average germination time, AGP average germination percentage, WDA wind dispersal ability, ADA animal dispersal ability, “-” missing value (XLS 77 kb)

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Qi, W., Bu, H., Liu, K. et al. Biological traits are correlated with elevational distribution range of eastern Tibetan herbaceous species. Plant Ecol 215, 1187–1198 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-014-0377-0

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