Plant geographical range size and climate stability in China: Growth form matters

Abstract

Aim Geographical variation of range size is thought to be linked to climate seasonality and Quaternary glacial–interglacial oscillations. In addition, the importance of long‐term climate stability is expected to be modulated by species' migration abilities. For plants, growth forms integrate traits that affect migration ability. Hence, we assess the relative importance of short‐ and long‐term climate stability for range size patterns in plants and whether long‐term stability is more important for more poorly migrating growth forms. Location China. Time period Last 21 ka. Major taxa studied Vascular plants. Methods A dataset including > 30,000 vascular plants was used to quantify geographical patterns of range size across China for all species and for eight growth forms separately. Spatial and non‐spatial regressions with information‐theoretical multi‐model selection were performed to estimate the explanatory importance of climate seasonality and climate‐change velocity from the Last Glacial Maximum to the present. The proportion of endemism for each growth form was also calculated. Results Large geographical range sizes were generally observed in regions with strong climate seasonality and high climate‐change velocity. The association between range size and velocity was stronger for perennial herbs and shrubs than for ferns, annual herbs, climbers and trees and stronger for small than for large trees; that is, more important for the growth forms with lower migration capacities. In line with this interpretation, growth forms strongly influenced by velocity also tend to have high proportions of endemism, which is also consistent with a relatively low ability to migrate. Main conclusions Range size patterns of vascular plants in China are shaped by both climate seasonality and long‐term climate stability, even though the region had a relatively mild influence from the Pleistocene glaciations, with a stronger influence of palaeoclimate stability on more poorly migrating groups. The differential influences of palaeoclimate stability across growth forms suggest that it needs further attention in research and management and that different growth forms are likely to respond in different ways to future climate changes.

Geographic patterns and environmental correlates of taxonomic and phylogenetic beta diversity for large‐scale angiosperm assemblages in China

“…Because there are few inventory‐based species checklists of vascular plants at the spatial scale of 10 000 km 2 in China, we are not able to assess the degree of completeness of the species lists used in this study for 100 × 100 km grid cells. Considering that the species lists of 100 × 100 km grid cells reported by Lu et al (2018) and by others for Chinese plants have been commonly used in macroecological studies (Feng et al 2016, Lu et al 2018, Xu et al 2018, Zhao et al 2018, Ye et al 2019), the use of occurrence data compiled for Chinese plants in 100 × 100 km grid cells in the present study is consistent with the current literature. Furthermore, because the plant data used in this study is an updated version of the data reported by Lu et al (2018), with 10.5 millions of specimen records from NSII and GBIF (Qian et al 2018) and over 200 local and regional floras (Qian et al 2017, 2018) having been used to update Lu et al's data, we believe the species lists used in this study are more complete than those used in most, if not all, of previous macroecological studies on Chinese plants at the spatial scale of 10 000 km 2 .…”

Contributions of precipitation and temperature to the large scale geographic distribution of fleshy-fruited plant species: Growth form matters

“…Species distribution data was extracted from the Chinese Vascular Plant Distribution Database, which assembled species distribution information of over six million specimens and over 1000 volumes of published books, such as Flora of China and regional plant resource investigation reports 52 . The database provides distribution information for over 30000 species across all counties in China.…”

“…The total contribution was the pseudo- R 2 calculated by the squared Pearson correlation between observed values and the non-spatial trends of fitting by the single predictor SAR model 62 . The unique contribution of each variable was calculated by subtracting the pseudo- R 2 of the SAR model ( R 2 for the OLS model) excluding that variable from the pseudo- R 2 of the full SAR model ( R 2 for the OLS full model) 52 . The OLS univariate model and multivariable model results were provided in Tables S2 , S3 .…”

Species range size patterns and their significance on biodiversity conservation

“…生态位幅度及生物多样性 [60] 、植物种子大小及 世代长短 [61] 也会影响物种分布区特征. 基于对鸟类和 哺乳类等类群的研究, 气候稳定性、气候变异、进 化、种间关系和冰川历史等均影响物种分布区特征的 变化 [14,23,54,56,62,63] . 在进行该类研究时, 根据不同的研 究对象, 潜在的需要考虑的影响因素很多.…”