Understory herbaceous plants are an important component of forest ecosystems, playing important roles in species diversity and forest dynamics in forests. However, the current understanding of the biodiversity of forest communities is mostly from woody plants, and knowledge of community structure and species diversity for understory herbaceous plants remains scarce. In a subtropical forest in China, we investigated understory vascular herbaceous diversity from 300 plots (5 × 5 m) in the main growing season. In this study, we analyzed the community structure and diversity pattern of the understory herbaceous community and linked the species diversity pattern to both abiotic and biotic environments. We found a rich diversity of understory herbaceous communities in this forest (81 species belonging to 55 genera), and floristic elements at the genus level were dominated by tropical elements, followed by temperate elements. The diversity pattern of the understory herbaceous showed a significant habitat preference, with the highest diversity in the lowland valleys and then followed by in middle slopes. In addition, herbaceous diversity was significantly affected by both abiotic factors (such as terrain convexity) and biotic factors (such as the diversity of surrounding woody plants). Our study indicated that species diversity of understory herbaceous showed a remarkable habitat preference, such as lowland valleys, and highlighted the importance of both abiotic and biotic environments in driving herbaceous diversity patterns in the subtropical forest understory.
“Interspecific associations” refers to the interrelationship among different species in a particular spatial distribution, which plays an important role in species distribution, community assembly, and responses to environmental changes. However, the strength and/or direction of interspecific associations may vary with environmental gradients and scales. To understand the effects of habitat types and research scales on interspecific associations in subtropical forests, we modeled the interspecific associations for more than 15,000 individuals representing 74 co-occurring species from three habitat types and three scales by using the variance ratio and the Spearman rank correlation coefficient. We found that overall interspecific associations at a community level exhibited significant positive associations for most habitat types and scales. Moreover, interspecific associations of pairwise species have strong habitat dependence, and the association strengths decreased with the increase in elevation (change in habitat types). However, the scale dependence of pairwise interspecific associations varies with habitat types. The strength of interspecific associations increased with the increasing scales (10 m × 10 m, 20 m × 20 m, and 40 m × 40 m) at low-valleys and mid-hillside habitats, while the scale-dependent effect was not detected at high-ridges. In conclusion, our study highlights the importance of environmental gradients and research scales on interspecific associations in diverse subtropical forests, and environmental gradients and research scales should be considered in future studies.
Temporal change of beta diversity provides a better understanding of the extent and consequences of species composition in forest communities with the ongoing global climate change. However, relatively little is known about temporal beta diversity changes across vertical stratification in the forest. In this study, we divided more than 5,000 tree individuals from a mixed broadleaf-conifer forest into four vertical strata (i.e., shrub, subcanopy, lower canopy, and upper canopy) to quantify how vertical stratification drives the temporal change of taxonomic and phylogenetic beta diversity. We found that taxonomic beta diversity significantly decreased while phylogenetic beta diversity showed an insignificant increase after 5 years. When considering vertical stratification, taxonomic beta diversity in the subcanopy, lower canopy, and upper canopy significantly changed with inconsistent directions, but phylogenetic beta diversity in the shrub significantly increased. Moreover, the significant decrease in taxonomic beta diversity is mainly driven by changes in species composition in shrub and subcanopy stratification (with 85.89% contributions). The changes in phylogenetic beta diversity are driven by shifts in the shrub and upper canopy (with 96.02% contributions). Our study suggests that taking community vertical stratification into consideration contributes to a better understanding of temporal beta diversity in forest communities.
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