Characteristics and effects of sprouting on species diversity in a subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest in Gutianshan, East China

Abstract

Sprouting, a life history strategy found in woody plant communities, enables woody plants to persist in situ through disturbance events. The 'persistence niche' of sprouting has important influences on species coexistence, community assembly, and ecosystem stability. However, the mechanism of the 'persistence niche' in maintaining species diversity is not well understood. Based on data collected in a 5 ha plot in a mid-subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest in the Gutianshan National Natural Reserve of Zhejiang Province, China, we analyzed the characteristics of sprouting and their relationships with species diversity. Our results revealed that the sprouting species had a great proportion of 63.95% in richness and a high proportion of 38.53% in abundance, especially a higher abundance proportion of 59.51% of potential sprouting at the community level. Sprouting occurred in most taxa, and there was high ability of sprouting in Fagaceae, Ericaceae, Hamamelidaceae, and Theaceae. There were significant negative correlations between abundance proportion of sprouting species and the biodiversity index of the community, despite no relationships between richness proportion of sprouting species and biodiversity index. Therefore, the sprouters could retain their position in forests and reduce biodiversity of the forest community. This trade-off of sprouting may result in the maintenance of community stability.

Multi-stemming strategies of Quercus glauca in an evergreen broad-leaved forest: when and where

“…Previous studies have found that multi-stemmed trees of Q. glauca were mostly found in disturbed and habitats with gullies and flooding regimes (Chen and Song 1997), or in forest logging sites with severe soil erosion and relatively poor soil (Yu and Chen 1998). Moreover, extreme climatic events can have a strong impact on sprouting; for instance the unprecedented combination of low temperature and persistent snow in January 2008 caused widespread freezing in EBLF of eastern China (Jin et al 2015), and 10 years later the frequency of multistemmed trees of Q. glauca was higher than that of other species in our subtropical EBLFs plot (Ye et al 2017). These observations suggest that the regeneration strategies (i.e.…”

“…Multi-stemmed trees are particularly prevalent in subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forests (EBLFs) (Nanami et al 2004;Nzunda et al 2007;Wang et al 2007;Ye et al 2017), where the complex terrains promote a series of disturbances. Topographic factors have important impacts on the growth and distribution of plant species by directly or indirectly affecting the patterns of light, moisture and soil nutrition (Comita et al 2007;Guo et al 2016;Lai et al 2009).…”