Altitudinal patterns of plant species richness on the Baekdudaegan Mountains, South Korea: mid‐domain effect, area, climate, and Rapoport's rule

Abstract

We studied the altitudinal patterns of plant species richness and examined the effects of geometric constraints, area, and climatic factors on the observed richness patterns along the ridge of the Baekdudaegan Mountains, South Korea. Rapoport's altitudinal rule was evaluated by examining the relationship between altitudinal range size and midpoint. We also examined the latitudinal effect on species richness. Plant data were collected from 1,100 plots along a 200–1,900 m altitudinal gradient along the ridge of the Baekdudaegan. A total of 802 plant species from 97 families and 342 genera were found. The altitudinal patterns of plant species richness along the ridge of the Baekdudaegan depicted distinctly hump‐shaped patterns, although the absolute altitudes of the richness peaks vary somewhat among plant groups. While the mid‐domain effect (MDE) was the most powerful explanatory variable in simple regression models, species richness was also associated with climatic factors, especially mean annual precipitation (MAP) and temperature (MAT) in multiple regression models. The relative importance of the MDE and climatic factors were different among plant groups. The MDE was more important for woody plants and for large‐ranged species, whereas climatic factors were better predictors for total and herbaceous plants and for small‐ranged species. Rapoport's altitudinal rule and a latitudinal effect on species richness were not supported. Our study suggests that a combined interaction of the MDE and climatic factors influences species richness patterns along the altitudinal gradient of the Baekdudaegan Mountains, South Korea.

Elevational Patterns of Plant Richness in the Taibai Mountain, China

“…The geometric constraint may be another spatial factor causing the variation of species richness patterns, and many studies have confirmed that MDE has a strong explanatory power on hump-shaped patterns [31, 35, 49, 84]. In this study, MDE was a powerful factor on pattern of bryophytes and the null model fitted the observed species of bryophytes well (Figure 4(c)), whereas it was a weak predictor of ferns richness.…”

“…The distribution range margins of individual species were controlled directly or indirectly by climatic factors when they exceed the physiological tolerances of species [24, 40]. Recently, some studies have found that species richness along elevational gradients commonly correlated with climatic factors like temperature and precipitation [31, 51]. What is more, many scholars suggested that the hump-shaped pattern of species appeared due to the unimodal distribution of precipitation along the elevational gradient [12, 20, 52].…”

The mid-domain effect in ectomycorrhizal fungi: range overlap along an elevation gradient on Mount Fuji, Japan

“…The MDE on species richness is recognized in many terrestrial macroorganisms (Colwell et al, 2004;McCain, 2005;Rahbek, 2005;Lee et al, 2013) and in freshwater macroinvertebrates (Wang et al, 2011), but this study is the first to demonstrate this effect in microorganisms and EM fungi. MDE models predict that random placement of species ranges within a bounded geographical domain leads to increased range overlap toward the center of the domain, producing a peak in species richness in that area (Colwell and Lees, 2000).…”

“…Elevation gradients provide an ideal opportunity for testing the applicability of MDE models (Kluge et al, 2006;McCain, 2009;Lee et al, 2013). Species distributions and range overlaps across sites are readily recognized in plants and animals, but examining such patterns in soil microorganisms remains a major challenge.…”

Altitudinal patterns illustrate the invasion mechanisms of alien plants in temperate mountain forests of northern China

“…The two most common altitudinal species richness patterns are hump-shaped and monotonically decreasing patterns (Rahbek, 1995). Several factors are considered to explain those altitude patterns, such as energy constraints, the mid-domain effect (MED), species-area relationship and contemporary and historical ecological forces (Currie, 1991;Hawkins et al, 2003;Hawkins et al, 2005;Lee et al, 2013). An increase in altitude is usually accompanied by harsher environments in wet climates.…”