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| Community phylogenetic structure of grasslandsand its relationship with environmental factors on the Mongolian Plateau |
Lei DONG1, Cunzhu LIANG1,*( ), Frank Yonghong LI1, Liqing ZHAO1, Wenhong MA1, Lixin WANG1, Lu WEN1, Ying ZHENG1, Zijing LI1, Chenguang ZHAO2, IndreeTUVSHINTOGTOKH3 |
1Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Ecology and Resource Use of the Mongolian Plateau & Inner Mongolia Key Laboratory of Grassland Ecology, School of Ecology and Environment, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot 010021, China;
2 Forestry and DesertControl Research Institute of Alagxa League,Bayanhot750306,China
3Institute of General and Experimental Biology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Ulaanbaatar-51, Mongolia |
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Abstract The community assembly rules and species coexistence have always been interested by ecologists.The community phylogenetic structure is the consequence of the interaction process between the organisms and the abiotic environmentand has been used to explain the relative impactof abiotic and biotic factors on species co-existence. In recent years, grassland degradation and biodiversity loss have become increasingly severe on the Mongolian Plateau,while the drivers for these changes are not clearly explored, especially whether climate change is a main factor is debated in academia. In this study, we examined the phylogenetic structure of grassland communities along five transects of climate aridity on the Mongolian Plateau, and analyzed their relations with environmental factors, with the aims to understand theformation mechanismof the grasslandcommunities and the role of climatic factors.We surveyed grassland communities at 81 sites along the five transects,and calculated theirnet relatedness index (NRI)attwo different quadratscales (smallscale of 1 m2 and largescale of 5 m2) to characterize thecommunity phylogenetic structure andanalyzeitsrelationship withthe key 11 environmental factors. We also calculatedthe generalized UniFrac distance (GUniFrac)among the grassland communities to quantify the influence of spatial distance and environmental distance on the phylogenetic β diversity. The results indicated that plant community survey using the largescalequadrat contained sufficient species to represent community compositions. The community phylogenetic structure of grasslandswas significantly overdispersed at both the small and largescales, and the degree of overdispersion was greater at the large scalethan at the smallscale, suggesting that competitive exclusion instead of habitat filtering played a major role in determination of community composition. Altitude was the main factor affecting the community phylogenetic structure, whereas climatic factors, such as precipitation and temperature, had limited influence. Theprincipal component analysis of the 11 environmental factorsrevealed that 94.04% of their variation was accounted by the first four principal components.Moreover only 14.29% and 23.26% of the variation in community phylogenetic structurewere explained by the first four principal componentsat the small and largescales, respectively. Phylogenetic β diversity was slightly significantly correlated with both spatial distance and environmental distance, however,environmental distancehada less explanatory powerthan spatial distance, indicating a limited environmental effect on the community phylogenetic structure of grasslands on the Mongolian Plateau. In view of the limited effect of climatic factors on the community phylogenetic structure of grasslands, climate change may have a smaller impact on grassland degradation than previously thought.
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Received: 30 March 2018
Published: 10 August 2019
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| Fund: This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC0500503) and the Science and Technology Program of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China (20140409, 201503001). The authors also thank to the reviewers and editors for their helpful suggestions. |
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Corresponding Authors:
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| About author: The first and second authors contributed equally to this work. |
| Cite this article:
Lei DONG, Cunzhu LIANG, Frank Yonghong LI, Liqing ZHAO, Wenhong MA, Lixin WANG, Lu WEN, Ying ZHENG, Zijing LI, Chenguang ZHAO, IndreeTUVSHINTOGTOKH. Community phylogenetic structure of grasslandsand its relationship with environmental factors on the Mongolian Plateau. Journal of Arid Land, 2019, 11(4): 595-607.
URL:
http://jal.xjegi.com/10.1007/s40333-019-0122-6 OR http://jal.xjegi.com/Y2019/V11/I4/595
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