Dataset Information

Species richness patterns and water-energy dynamics in the drylands of Northwest China.

ABSTRACT: Dryland ecosystems are highly vulnerable to climatic and land-use changes, while the mechanisms underlying patterns of dryland species richness are still elusive. With distributions of 3637 native vascular plants, 154 mammals, and 425 birds in Xinjiang, China, we tested the water-energy dynamics hypothesis for species richness patterns in Central Asian drylands. Our results supported the water-energy dynamics hypothesis. We found that species richness of all three groups was a hump-shaped function of energy availability, but a linear function of water availability. We further found that water availability had stronger effects on plant richness, but weaker effects on vertebrate richness than energy availability. We conducted piecewise linear regressions to detect the breakpoints in the relationship between species richness and potential evapotranspiration which divided Xinjiang into low and high energy regions. The concordance between mammal and plant richness was stronger in high than in low energy regions, which was opposite to that between birds and plants. Plant richness had stronger effects than climate on mammal richness regardless of energy levels, but on bird richness only in high energy regions. The changes in the concordance between vertebrate and plant richness along the climatic gradient suggest that cautions are needed when using concordance between taxa in conservation planning.

SUBMITTER: Li L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3688736 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Species richness patterns and water-energy dynamics in the drylands of Northwest China.

Li Liping L Wang Zhiheng Z Zerbe Stefan S Abdusalih Nurbay N Tang Zhiyao Z Ma Ming M Yin Linke L Mohammat Anwar A Han Wenxuan W Fang Jingyun J

PloS one 20130620 6

Dryland ecosystems are highly vulnerable to climatic and land-use changes, while the mechanisms underlying patterns of dryland species richness are still elusive. With distributions of 3637 native vascular plants, 154 mammals, and 425 birds in Xinjiang, China, we tested the water-energy dynamics hypothesis for species richness patterns in Central Asian drylands. Our results supported the water-energy dynamics hypothesis. We found that species richness of all three groups was a hump-shaped functi ...[more]

PMID: 23840472

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Project description:Studying the pattern of species richness is crucial in understanding the diversity and distribution of organisms in the earth. Climate and human influences are the major driving factors that directly influence the large-scale distributions of plant species, including gymnosperms. Understanding how gymnosperms respond to climate, topography, and human-induced changes is useful in predicting the impacts of global change. Here, we attempt to evaluate how climatic and human-induced processes could affect the spatial richness patterns of gymnosperms in China. Initially, we divided a map of the country into grid cells of 50 × 50 km2 spatial resolution and plotted the geographical coordinate distribution occurrence of 236 native gymnosperm taxa. The gymnosperm taxa were separated into three response variables: (a) all species, (b) endemic species, and (c) nonendemic species, based on their distribution. The species richness patterns of these response variables to four predictor sets were also evaluated: (a) energy-water, (b) climatic seasonality, (c) habitat heterogeneity, and (d) human influences. We performed generalized linear models (GLMs) and variation partitioning analyses to determine the effect of predictors on spatial richness patterns. The results showed that the distribution pattern of species richness was highest in the southwestern mountainous area and Taiwan in China. We found a significant relationship between the predictor variable set and species richness pattern. Further, our findings provide evidence that climatic seasonality is the most important factor in explaining distinct fractions of variations in the species richness patterns of all studied response variables. Moreover, it was found that energy-water was the best predictor set to determine the richness pattern of all species and endemic species, while habitat heterogeneity has a better influence on nonendemic species. Therefore, we conclude that with the current climate fluctuations as a result of climate change and increasing human activities, gymnosperms might face a high risk of extinction.

Project description:Simple Summary Mountains are storehouses of global biodiversity; they host one-quarter of all terrestrial species at condensed spatial scales. Understanding the mechanisms and patterns that are associated with species richness along elevational gradients would help us to answer why mountains are so biologically diverse. However, despite decades of effort, a consensus regarding the processes that contribute to diversity in these locations is yet to be reached. Here, we compare the importance of four hypotheses on shaping the elevational species richness patterns of plants in 22 global mountainous regions. Moreover, a comparative analysis among different plant growth form groups was conducted to remove the influence of specific mountain attributes, such as topography complexity, history, and area. The results reveal that the performance of these hypotheses depend on the growth form and climatic conditions. The energy hypothesis provides a better explanation for the elevational species richness patterns of woody plants than the other hypotheses, while energy-related factors show greater explanatory power for predicting elevational species richness patterns in colder mountain regions. Our results highlight the importance of energy availability for the production of plant elevational species richness patterns, which is essential for the conservation and management of biodiversity. Abstract Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain elevational species richness patterns; however, evaluating their importance remains a challenge, as mountains that are nested within different biogeographic regions have different environmental attributes. Here, we conducted a comparative study for trees, shrubs, herbs, and ferns along the same elevational gradient for 22 mountains worldwide, examining the performance of hypotheses of energy, tolerance, climatic variability, and spatial area to explain the elevational species richness patterns for each plant group. Results show that for trees and shrubs, energy-related factors exhibit greater explanatory power than other factors, whereas the factors that are associated with climatic variability performed better in explaining the elevational species richness patterns of herbs and ferns. For colder mountains, energy-related factors emerged as the main drivers of woody species diversity, whereas in hotter and wetter ecosystems, temperature and precipitation were the most important predictors of species richness along elevational gradients. For herbs and ferns, the variation in species richness was less than that of woody species. These findings provide important evidence concerning the generality of the energy theory for explaining the elevational species richness pattern of plants, highlighting that the underlying mechanisms may change among different growth form groups and regions within which mountains are nested.

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Dataset Information

Species richness patterns and water-energy dynamics in the drylands of Northwest China.

Publications

Species richness patterns and water-energy dynamics in the drylands of Northwest China.

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