Dataset Information

Spatial Patterns of Species Diversity and Phylogenetic Structure of Plant Communities in the Tianshan Mountains, Arid Central Asia.

ABSTRACT: The Tianshan Mountains, located in arid Central Asia, have a humid climate and are biodiversity hotspots. Here, we aimed to clarify whether the pattern of species diversity and the phylogenetic structure of plant communities is affected by environmental variables and glacial refugia. In this study, plant community assemblies of 17 research sites with a total of 35 sample plots were investigated at the grassland/woodland boundaries on the Tianshan Mountains. Community phylogeny of these plant communities was constructed based on two plant DNA barcode regions. The indices of phylogenetic diversity and phylogenetic community structure were calculated for these sample plots. We first estimated the correlation coefficients between species richness (SR) and environmental variables as well as the presence of glacial refugia. We then mapped the significant values of indices of community phylogeny (PD, RPD, NRI, and NTI) to investigate the correlation between community phylogeny and environmental structure or macrozones in the study area. The results showed that a significantly higher value of SR was obtained for the refugial groups than for the colonizing groups (P < 0.05); presence of refugia and environmental variables were highly correlated to the pattern of variation in SR. Indices of community phylogeny were not significantly different between refugial and colonizing regions. Comparison with the humid western part showed that plant communities in the arid eastern part of the Tianshan Mountains tended to display more significant phylogenetic overdispersion. The variation tendency of the PhyloSor index showed that the increase in macro-geographical and environmental distance did not influence obvious phylogenetic dissimilarities between different sample plots. In conclusion, glacial refugia and environmental factors profoundly influenced the pattern of SR, but community phylogenetic structure was not affected by glacial refugia among different plant communities on the Tianshan Mountains. This pattern of community phylogenetic structure could have resulted from shared ancestry and species pool among these sample plots.

SUBMITTER: Zhang HX

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5733559 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Spatial Patterns of Species Diversity and Phylogenetic Structure of Plant Communities in the Tianshan Mountains, Arid Central Asia.

Zhang Hong-Xiang HX Zhang Ming-Li ML

Frontiers in plant science 20171213

The Tianshan Mountains, located in arid Central Asia, have a humid climate and are biodiversity hotspots. Here, we aimed to clarify whether the pattern of species diversity and the phylogenetic structure of plant communities is affected by environmental variables and glacial refugia. In this study, plant community assemblies of 17 research sites with a total of 35 sample plots were investigated at the grassland/woodland boundaries on the Tianshan Mountains. Community phylogeny of these plant com ...[more]

PMID: 29321791

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Project description:A large number of studies have reported the importance of bacterial communities in ecosystems and their responses to soil degradation, but the response mechanism in arid alpine wetlands is still unclear. Here, the non-degraded (ND), slightly degraded (SD), and heavily degraded (HD) regions of Bayinbuluk alpine wetland were used to analyzed the diversity, structure and function of bacterial communities in three degraded wetlands using 16S rRNA. The results showed that with the increase of degradation degree, the content of soil moisture (SM) and available nitrogen (AN) decreased significantly, plant species richness and total vegetation coverage decreased significantly, Cyperaceae (Cy) coverage decreased significantly, and Gramineae (Gr) coverage increased significantly. Degradation did not significantly affect the diversity of the bacterial community, but changed the relative abundance of the community structure. Degradation significantly increased the relative abundance of Actinobacteria (ND: 3.95%; SD: 7.27%; HD: 23.97%) and Gemmatimonadetes (ND: 0.39%; SD: 2.17%; HD: 10.78%), while significantly reducing the relative abundance of Chloroflexi (ND: 13.92%; SD: 8.68%; HD: 3.55%) and Nitrospirae (ND: 6.18%; SD: 0.45%; HD: 2.32%). Degradation significantly reduced some of the potential functions in the bacterial community associated with the carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and sulfur (S) cycles, such as hydrocarbon degradation (ND: 25.00%; SD: 1.74%; HD: 6.59%), such as aerobic ammonia oxidation (ND: 5.96%; SD: 22.82%; HD: 4.55%), and dark sulfide oxidation (ND: 32.68%; SD: 0.37%; HD: 0.28%). Distance-based redundancy analysis (db-RDA) results showed that the bacteria community was significantly related to the TC (total carbon) and Gr (P < 0.05). The results of linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) analysis indicate significant enrichments of Alphaproteobacteria and Sphingomonas in the HD area. The vegetation communities and soil nutrients changed significantly with increasing soil degradation levels, and Sphingomonas could be used as potential biomarker of degraded alpine wetlands.

Dataset Information

Spatial Patterns of Species Diversity and Phylogenetic Structure of Plant Communities in the Tianshan Mountains, Arid Central Asia.

Publications

Spatial Patterns of Species Diversity and Phylogenetic Structure of Plant Communities in the Tianshan Mountains, Arid Central Asia.

Similar Datasets

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