Examining the patterns and dynamics of species abundance distributions in succession of forest communities by model selection
Autor: | Zuo-Yun Yin, Lu Zeng, Shao-Ming Luo, Xiao He, Ping Chen, Bailian Li, Wei Guo |
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Rok vydání: | 2016 |
Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
Ecological Metrics Forest Ecology Rare species lcsh:Medicine Herbs Ecological succession Forests 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences Models Biological Ecosystems Trees Common species Biosphere Abundance (ecology) lcsh:Science Relative species abundance Relative abundance distribution Multidisciplinary Ecology Geography lcsh:R Ecology and Environmental Sciences Organisms Biology and Life Sciences Eukaryota Species Diversity Vegetation Plants Terrestrial Environments 010601 ecology Community Ecology Physical Geography Earth Sciences lcsh:Q Shrubs Quadrat Research Article |
Zdroj: | PLoS ONE PLoS ONE, Vol 13, Iss 5, p e0196898 (2018) |
ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
Popis: | There are a few common species and many rare species in a biological community or a multi-species collection in given space and time. This hollow distribution curve is called species abundance distribution (SAD). Few studies have examined the patterns and dynamics of SADs during the succession of forest communities by model selection. This study explored whether the communities in different successional stages followed different SAD models and whether there existed a best SAD model to reveal their intrinsic quantitative features of structure and dynamics in succession. The abundance (the number of individuals) of each vascular plant was surveyed by quadrat sampling method from the tree, shrub and herb layers in two typical communities (i.e., the evergreen needle- and broad-leaved mixed forest and the monsoon evergreen broad-leaved forest) in southern subtropical Dinghushan Biosphere Reserve, South China. The sites of two forest communities in different successional stages are both 1 ha in area. We collected seven widely representative SAD models with obviously different function forms and transformed them into the same octave (log2) scale. These models are simultaneously confronted with eight datasets from four layers of two communities, and their goodness-of-fits to the data were evaluated by the chi-squared test, the adjusted coefficient of determination and the information criteria. The results indicated that: (1) the logCauchy model followed all the datasets and was the best among seven models; (2) the fitness of each model to the data was not directly related to the successional stage of forest community; (3) according to the SAD curves predicted by the best model (i.e., the logCauchy), the proportion of rare species decreased but that of common ones increased in the upper layers with succession, while the reverse was true in the lower layers; and (4) the difference of the SADs increased between the upper and the lower layers with succession. We concluded that the logCauchy model had the widest applicability in describing the SADs, and could best mirror the SAD patterns and dynamics of communities and their different layers in the succession of forests. The logCauchy-modeled SADs can quantitatively guide the construction of ecological forests and the restoration of degraded vegetation. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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