Abstract
Plant communities in mountainous areas shift gradually as climatic conditions change with altitude. How trait structure in multivariate space adapts to these varying climates in natural forest stands is unclear. Studying the multivariate functional trait structure and redundancy of tree communities along altitude gradients is crucial to understanding how temperature change affects natural forest stands. In this study, the leaf area, specific leaf area, leaf carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous content from 1,590 trees were collected and used to construct the functional trait space of 12 plant communities at altitudes ranging from 800 m to 3,800 m across three mountains. Hypervolume overlap was calculated to quantify species trait redundancy per community. First, hypervolumes of species exclusion and full species set were calculated, respectively. Second, the overlap between these two volumes was calculated to obtain hypervolume overlap. Results showed that the functional trait space significantly increased with mean annual temperature toward lower altitudes within and across three mountains, whereas species trait redundancy had different patterns between mountains. Thus, warming can widen functional trait space and alter the redundancy in plant communities. The inconsistent patterns of redundancy between mountains suggest that warming exerts varying influences on different ecosystems. Identification of climate-vulnerable ecosystems is important in the face of global warming.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB31000000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31870409, 32061123003), the National Science and Technology Ministry Major Project (2017YFA0605103), CAS Interdisciplinary Innovation Team (JCTD-2018-06), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (2019082) and the National Science Foundation of the United States (DEB-2029997). We acknowledge the local helpers involved in setting up the plots and collecting data.
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Functional trait space and redundancy of plant communities decrease toward cold temperature at high altitudes in Southwest China
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Zhang, L., Liu, X., Sun, Z. et al. Functional trait space and redundancy of plant communities decrease toward cold temperature at high altitudes in Southwest China. Sci. China Life Sci. 66, 376–384 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-021-2135-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-021-2135-3