Assessing biological dissimilarities between five forest communities

Forest Ecosystems

卷:6

Klaus von Gadow¹  M. Socorro González-Elizondo²  M. Guadalupe Nava-Miranda³  J. Javier Corral-Rivas³  Chunyu Zhang⁴  Xiuhai Zhao⁴  Minhui Hao⁴  K. Narayanagowda Ganeshaiah⁵ 

[1] Faculty of Forestry and Forest Ecology, Georg-August-Universität;

[2] Instituto Politécnico Nacional, CIIDIR Unidad Durango;

[3] Instituto de Silvicultura e Industria de la Madera, Universidad Juárez del Estado de Durango;

[4] Research Center of Forest Management Engineering of State Forestry and Grassland Administration, Beijing Forestry University;

[5] School of Ecology and Conservation, University of Agricultural Science;

关键词: Avalanche index;    Biological distance;    Community dissimilarity;    Forest community;    New approach;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s40663-019-0188-9

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Abstract Background Dissimilarity in community composition is one of the most fundamental and conspicuous features by which different forest ecosystems may be distinguished. Traditional estimates of community dissimilarity are based on differences in species incidence or abundance (e.g. the Jaccard, Sørensen, and Bray-Curtis dissimilarity indices). However, community dissimilarity is not only affected by differences in species incidence or abundance, but also by biological heterogeneities among species. Methods The objective of this study is to present a new measure of dissimilarity involving the biological heterogeneity among species. The “discriminating Avalanche” introduced in this study, is based on the taxonomic dissimilarity between tree species. The application is demonstrated using observations from five stem-mapped forest plots in China and Mexico. We compared three traditional community dissimilarity indices (Jaccard, Sørensen, and Bray-Curtis) with the “discriminating Avalanche” index, which incorporates information, not only about species frequencies, but also about their taxonomic hierarchies. Results Different patterns emerged for different measures of community dissimilarity. Compared with the traditional approaches, the discriminating Avalanche values showed a more realistic estimate of community dissimilarities, indicating a greater similarity among communities when species were closely related. Conclusions Traditional approaches for assessing community dissimilarity disregard the taxonomic hierarchy. In the traditional analysis, the dissimilarity between Pinus cooperi and Pinus durangensis would be the same as the dissimilarity between P. cooperi and Arbutus arizonica. The dissimilarity Avalanche dissimilarity between P. cooperi and P. durangensis is considerably lower than the dissimilarity between P. cooperi and A. arizonica, because the taxonomic hierarchies are incorporated. Therefore, the discriminating Avalanche is a more realistic measure of community dissimilarity. This main result of our study may contribute to improved characterization of community dissimilarities.

【 授权许可】

Unknown