Browsing by Author "von Gadow, Klaus"

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    Latitudinal gradients and ecological drivers of β-diversity vary across spatial scales in a temperate forest region
    (Wiley, 2020-03-12) Zhang, Chunyu; He, Fangliang; Zhang, Zhonghui; Zhao, Xiuhai; von Gadow, Klaus
    Aim: Our understanding of the mechanisms driving β-diversity is still rather rudimentary. This study evaluates the influences of environmental filtering versus spatial scale of regional communities on β-diversity across latitudes. Location: North-eastern China. Methods: The β-diversity was calculated in each regional community. The spatial extent of these “regional communities”, which included five or 10 plots, was ≤ 140 km. A random assembly null model was used to assess the effects of species abundance distribution on the β-diversity. Moreover, the deviation of observed β-diversity from a null model (called β-deviation) was also assessed. The variations of the β values were partitioned into environmental, latitudinal and their joint effects. Results: The observed β-diversity declined with increasing latitude, although the β-deviations showed a non-monotonic pattern as the latitude increased at two studied scales. All the regional communities consisting of five or 10 local plots exhibited significantly positive β-deviations. The total amount of variation in β-deviations explained by environmental and latitudinal variables increased dramatically with increasing scale. A significant pure environmental effect was observed at both scales, explaining 30% of the variation in β-deviation for regional communities consisting of five local plots and 58.7% for regional communities consisting of 10 local plots. The spatial variation in precipitation primarily accounted for the β-gradient. Main conclusions: This is one of the few multiscale analyses to investigate latitudinal patterns and driving mechanisms of tree β-diversity in temperate forests. The β-deviation showed a similar trend of change with latitude, but the variation of β-deviation explained by the environments and latitude was highly dependent on the scale of regional communities studied. Environmental filtering and the spatial scale of regional communities jointly accounted for the β-gradient, with environmental filtering appearing to determine the high variation of species turnover along the latitudinal gradient.