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Disentangling the effects of topography and space on the distributions of dominant species in a subtropical forest

  • Article
  • Ecology
  • Published:
Chinese Science Bulletin

Abstract

Topography and space are two important factors determining plant species assemblages in forest communities. Quantification of the contribution of these two factors in determining species distribution helps us to evaluate their relative importance in determining species assemblages. This study aims to disentangle the effect of topography and space on the distributions of 14 dominant species in a subtropical mixed forest. Spearman correlation analysis and the torus-translation test were used to test the species–habitat associations. Variation partitioning was used to quantify the relative contributions of topography and space at three sampling scales and three life stages. Correlation analyses and torus-translation tests showed species abundance was mostly correlated with topographic wetness index, vertical distance from the channel network and convexity. Variation partitioning showed that pure topography, pure space and spatially structured topography explained about 2.1 %, 41.2 % and 13.8 % of the variation in species distributions, respectively. For nine species, total topography fractions peaked in 20 m quadrats. For ten species, the pure space fractions peaked in 50 m quadrats. For many species, the total topography fraction and the pure space fraction were larger for the most abundant life stages, which reflected the importance of sampling effect. However, some cases did not follow this trend suggesting that the effects of ecological processes such as habitat filtering, density dependence or dispersal limitation may exceed the sampling effects. In conclusion, we found that spatially structured topography and pure space primarily shaped the distribution of dominant tree species. Furthermore, their effects were both scale- and life stage-dependent.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Administration Bureau of the Badagongshan National Nature Reserve and many field workers for their contributions to the establishment of 25-hm2 BDGS Forest Dynamic Plot. We thank Dr. Liu Feng, Scott Franklin and Wang Jun who provided helpful suggestions on this manuscript. We would also thank Dr. Akira Itoh from Osaka City University and Dr. Yiching Lin from DungHai University providing the R codes for torus-translation test based on continuous habitat variables. We are grateful for two anonymous referees’ constructive criticism and suggestion of the manuscript. We also thank Christine Verhille at the University of British Columbia for her assistance with English language and grammatical editing of the manuscript. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31270562 and 31200329) and the Chinese Forest Biodiversity Monitoring Network (29200931131101919).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Aquatic Botany and Watershed Ecology, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Qinggang Wang, Yaozhan Xu, Zhijun Lu, Dachuan Bao, Yili Guo, Junmeng Lu, Kuihan Zhang, Haibo Liu, Hongjie Meng, Xiujuan Qiao, Handong Huang & Mingxi Jiang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Qinggang Wang, Yaozhan Xu, Yili Guo, Junmeng Lu, Kuihan Zhang, Haibo Liu & Hongjie Meng

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  1. Qinggang Wang
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  2. Yaozhan Xu
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  3. Zhijun Lu
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  4. Dachuan Bao
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  5. Yili Guo
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  10. Xiujuan Qiao
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  11. Handong Huang
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  12. Mingxi Jiang
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Correspondence to Mingxi Jiang.

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Wang, Q., Xu, Y., Lu, Z. et al. Disentangling the effects of topography and space on the distributions of dominant species in a subtropical forest. Chin. Sci. Bull. 59, 5113–5122 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0453-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0453-9

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