Decoupling species richness variation and spatial turnover in beta diversity across a fragmented landscape

PeerJ

article

Guang Hu¹  Maxwell C. Wilson²  Jianguo Wu²  Jingjing Yu⁴  Mingjian Yu⁴ 

[1] School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University;School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University;School of Sustainability, Arizona State University;College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University

关键词: Area effect;    Environmental filtering;    Isolation;    Land-bridge islands;    Plant functional type;    Thousand Island Lake;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.6714

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Background How habitat fragmentation affects the relationship between local richness and the variation in community composition across space is important to both ecology and conservation biology, but this effect remains poorly understood. Methods Here, we present an empirical study to address this topic in a fragmented landscape, the Thousand Island Lake (TIL), an artificial land-bridge island system with more than 1,000 islands, which provides an “experimental” fragmented landscape with a homogeneous matrix and similar successional history. We measured species composition and plant functional type (PFT) on 29 islands, and tested the effects of island area and isolation on the relationship between α- and β-diversity. General Linear Models were applied to test the impact of habitat fragmentation. In addition, variation partitioning was used to decouple α-diversity dependent and α-diversity independent spatial turnover in β-diversity of the plant community and across different PFTs. Results We found habitat fragmentation influences β-diversity of plants primarily by modifying local α-diversity, not spatial turnover in the TIL system. We also found area-dependent environmental filtering and differential plant responses across functional types were the most likely underlying driving mechanisms. Discussion These results highlight the importance of hierarchical linkages between components of biodiversity across scales in fragmented landscapes, and have practical conservation implications.

【 授权许可】

CC BY