Dataset Information

Climate-driven elevational variation in range sizes of vascular plants in the central Himalayas: A supporting case for Rapoport's rule.

ABSTRACT: A fundamental yet controversial topic in biogeography is how and why species range sizes vary along spatial gradients. To advance our understanding of these questions and to provide insights into biological conservation, we assessed elevational variations in the range sizes of vascular plants with different life forms and biogeographical affinities and explored the main drivers underlying these variations in the longest valley in China's Himalayas, the Gyirong Valley. Elevational range sizes of vascular plants were documented in 96 sampling plots along an elevational gradient ranging from 1,800 to 5,400 m above sea level. We assessed the elevational variations in range size by averaging the range sizes of all recorded species within each sampling plot. We then related the range size to climate, disturbance, and the mid-domain effect and explored the relative importance of these factors in explaining the range size variations using the Random Forest model. A total of 545 vascular plants were recorded in the sampling plots along the elevational gradient. Of these, 158, 387, 337, and 112 were woody, herbaceous, temperate, and tropical species, respectively. The range size of each group of vascular plants exhibited uniform increasing trends along the elevational gradient, which was consistent with the prediction of Rapoport's rule. Climate was the main driver of the increasing trends of vascular plant range sizes in the Gyirong Valley. The climate variability hypothesis and mean climate condition hypothesis could both explain the elevation-range size relationships. Our results reinforce the previous notion that Rapoport's rule applies to regions where the influence of climate is the most pronounced, and call for close attention to the impact of climate change to prevent species range contraction and even extinction due to global warming.

SUBMITTER: Liang J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8293715 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:Species' geographical distributions are tracking latitudinal and elevational surface temperature gradients under global climate change. To evaluate the opportunities to track these gradients across space, we provide a first baseline assessment of the steepness of these gradients for the world's terrestrial birds. Within the breeding ranges of 9,014 bird species, we characterized the spatial gradients in temperature along latitude and elevation for all and a subset of bird species, respectively. We summarized these temperature gradients globally for threatened and non-threatened species and determined how their steepness varied based on species' geography (range size, shape, and orientation) and projected changes in temperature under climate change. Elevational temperature gradients were steepest for species in Africa, western North and South America, and central Asia and shallowest in Australasia, insular IndoMalaya, and the Neotropical lowlands. Latitudinal temperature gradients were steepest for extratropical species, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. Threatened species had shallower elevational gradients whereas latitudinal gradients differed little between threatened and non-threatened species. The strength of elevational gradients was positively correlated with projected changes in temperature. For latitudinal gradients, this relationship only held for extratropical species. The strength of latitudinal gradients was better predicted by species' geography, but primarily for extratropical species. Our findings suggest threatened species are associated with shallower elevational temperature gradients, whereas steep latitudinal gradients are most prevalent outside the tropics where fewer bird species occur year-round. Future modeling and mitigation efforts would benefit from the development of finer grain distributional data to ascertain how these gradients are structured within species' ranges, how and why these gradients vary among species, and the capacity of species to utilize these gradients under climate change.

Dataset Information

Climate-driven elevational variation in range sizes of vascular plants in the central Himalayas: A supporting case for Rapoport's rule.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets