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Effects of density dependence in a temperate forest in northeastern China.

ABSTRACT: Negative density dependence may cause reduced clustering among individuals of the same species, and evidence is accumulating that conspecific density-dependent self-thinning is an important mechanism regulating the spatial structure of plant populations. This study evaluates that specific density dependence in three very large observational studies representing three successional stages in a temperate forest in northeastern China. The methods include standard spatial point pattern analysis and a heterogeneous Poisson process as the null model to eliminate the effects of habitat heterogeneity. The results show that most of the species exhibit conspecific density-dependent self-thinning. In the early successional stage 11 of the 16 species, in the intermediate successional stage 18 of the 21 species and in the old growth stage all 21 species exhibited density dependence after removing the effects of habitat heterogeneity. The prevalence of density dependence thus varies among the three successional stages and exhibits an increase with increasing successional stage. The proportion of species showing density dependence varied depending on whether habitat heterogeneity was removed or not. Furthermore, the strength of density dependence is closely related with species abundance. Abundant species with high conspecific aggregation tend to exhibit greater density dependence than rare species.

SUBMITTER: Yao J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5015110 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Effects of density dependence in a temperate forest in northeastern China.

Yao Jie J Zhang Xinna X Zhang Chunyu C Zhao Xiuhai X von Gadow Klaus K

Scientific reports 20160908

Negative density dependence may cause reduced clustering among individuals of the same species, and evidence is accumulating that conspecific density-dependent self-thinning is an important mechanism regulating the spatial structure of plant populations. This study evaluates that specific density dependence in three very large observational studies representing three successional stages in a temperate forest in northeastern China. The methods include standard spatial point pattern analysis and a ...[more]

PMID: 27604642

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Project description:β-Diversity, which describes the extent of change in species composition in a given region, has become a core issue in ecology in recent years. However, it is hard to understand the underlying mechanisms of β-diversity by using indices that yield identical values under species replacement and nestedness pattern. Partitioning β-diversity into turnover (caused by species replacement among plots) and nestedness components (caused by species loss or gain among plots) may provide improved understanding of the variation in species composition. Here, we collected presence-absence data of 456 one-tenth ha circular plots in the temperate forests of Northeastern China spanning a latitudinal range of 12° (41-53°N). We decomposed β-diversity to assess the relative contribution of the turnover and nestedness components across latitudinal gradients. We used regression analysis to assess the relationship between spatial distance and β-diversity. We applied variation partitioning to evaluate the importance of the measured environmental and spatial variables in explaining β-diversity. We used the Tukey honest significant difference test to test the differences of β-diversity along latitudinal gradients. Pearson correlations (r) and significance (p-value) were computed using the Mantel tests to verify the relationship between distance and β-diversity. The ANOVA test was used to verify whether the variation of β-diversity explained by the environment and distance was significant. Our results showed that (1) β-diversity and the turnover component were higher at low latitudes (zones A and B) than at high latitudes (zones C and D), while there was no relationship between the nestedness component and latitude. (2) The turnover component was dominant. (3) The spatial distance explained more variation of β-diversity than the measured environmental factors. Therefore, we conclude that β-diversity is mainly a product of species turnover in our temperate forests, suggesting that different localities harbor different species. We find that decomposing β-diversity into the turnover and nestedness components is a useful approach to explore the variation of community composition and their causes.

Dataset Information

Effects of density dependence in a temperate forest in northeastern China.

Publications

Effects of density dependence in a temperate forest in northeastern China.

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