Patterns and drivers of species richness of early spring annual ephemeral plants in northern Xinjiang

doi:10.17520/biods.2020331

Abstract

Abstract:

Aims: Identifying factors that determine plant diversity remains an important issue in community ecology and biogeography. Many studies have demonstrated that plant diversity is tightly associated with a suite of environmental factors, such as elevation, contemporary climate, paleoclimate, soil nutrient availability, and aboveground biomass (AGB). However, their effects and relative importance on plant diversity is still unknown due to lack of comprehensive study.

Methods: To assess relative importance of elevation, contemporary climate, paleoclimate, soil nutrient availability and AGB on early spring annual ephemeral plant(s) (ESAE), we surveyed species richness of ESAE across 32 sites in 2017 and 2018 in northern Xinjiang. We used general linear models to explore relationships of mean species richness (SR) of ESAE with elevation, climate (including annual mean temperature, precipitation in winter, precipitation from February to May, and anomaly of precipitation from February to May since the Last Glacial Maximum), soil nutrient availability (pH, soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), the ratio of SOC to TN (C : N); the ratio of SOC to TP (C : P), the ratio of TN to TP (N : P), and AGB. We then adapted partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM) to measure the relative importance of each of these variables in regulating SR of ESAE.

Results: We found that SR of ESAE exhibited a significant unimodal pattern with increasing elevation, annual mean temperature, precipitation from February to May, anomaly of precipitation from February to May since the Last Glacial Maximum, soil pH, C : N, and AGB, but a U-shaped pattern with increasing precipitation in winter. Elevation, climate, and soil nutrients availability could influence SR of ESAE by altering AGB either directly or indirectly. Among these factors, climate was the most important factor in regulating SR of ESAE, followed by AGB, elevation, and soil nutrient availability, respectively.

Conclusion: Elevation, soil nutrients availability, climate and aboveground biomass had significant effects on species richness of EASA via their direct and indirect effects, but climate was the most important factor in regulating diversity of EASA.

Key words: elevation, climate, soil nutrients availability, aboveground biomass, species richness, early spring annual ephemeral plants.

Aixia Wang, Jingjing Ma, Huidie Gong, Guoan Fan, Mao Wang, Hongmei Zhao, Junhui Cheng. Patterns and drivers of species richness of early spring annual ephemeral plants in northern Xinjiang[J]. Biodiv Sci, 2021, 29(6): 735-745.

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URL: https://www.biodiversity-science.net/EN/10.17520/biods.2020331

https://www.biodiversity-science.net/EN/Y2021/V29/I6/735

Figures/Tables 5

Fig. 1 Sampling sites of early spring annual ephemeral plants in northern Xinjiang

Table 1 Basic information (latitude, longitude and elevation) and species richness

样地号 Sites	纬度 Latitude (N)	经度 Longitude (E)	海拔 Elevation (m)	物种丰富度 Species richness (Mean ± SD)
1	44.12°	80.84°	696	6.6 ± 1.17
2	43.46°	81.92°	1,130	1.5 ± 0.53
3	43.67°	81.16°	914	5.0 ± 0.94
4	43.66°	81.99°	739	4.6 ± 1.65
5	43.61°	82.75°	826	2.5 ± 0.58
6	43.40°	83.15°	934	3.6 ± 1.07
7	43.64°	81.69°	678	3.0 ± 1.85
8	44.37°	87.88°	448	5.6 ± 1.26
9	44.09°	88.68°	748	2.7 ± 0.67
10	43.69°	89.51°	1,488	1.2 ± 0.42
11	44.21°	90.07°	742	3.3 ± 1.49
12	44.96°	88.94°	556	2.8 ± 1.14
13	44.95°	88.58°	632	3.5 ± 1.72
14	45.22°	87.78°	589	3.3 ± 1.42
15	45.41°	86.91°	395	3.5 ± 1.51
16	45.47°	85.75°	286	1.3± 0.50
17	46.23°	85.84°	502	1.5 ± 0.71
18	47.28°	86.73°	665	1.25 ± 0.50
19	47.67°	86.88°	497	1.6 ± 0.70
20	47.04°	88.92°	802	1.6 ± 0.70
21	47.50°	87.31°	494	1.7 ± 0.67
22	47.04°	88.92°	802	1.0^#
23	46.79°	89.58°	954	1.6 ± 0.97
24	45.82°	89.52°	1,021	2.6 ± 1.78
25	45.16°	89.36°	1,073	1.2 ± 0.42
26	44.63°	88.82°	538	4.8 ± 1.32
27	44.16°	88.71°	603	3.0 ± 1.25
28	44.91°	84.81°	287	4.2 ± 1.23
29	46.04°	83.60°	864	4.0 ± 2.49
30	44.93°	82.62°	211	2.1 ± 1.29
31	44.52°	82.91°	411	3.5 ± 1.31
32	44.35°	85.09°	532	6.1 ± 2.60

Fig. 2 Relationships of species richness of early spring annual ephemeral plants with elevation (a), annual mean temperature (b), precipitation in winter (c), precipitation from February to May (d), precipitation anomaly from February to May since the Last Glacial Maximum (e), soil nutrients conditions (f, g) and aboveground biomass (h). The solid and dotted lines represented fitted relationship and its confidence interval at the significant level of 0.05. SOC and TN were abbreviations of soil organic carbon and total nitrogen, respectively. Here winter was defined from December to February.

Fig. 3 Direct and indirect effects of elevation (Ele), climate (Clim, including precipitation in winter, precipitation from February to May, anomaly of precipitation from February to May since the Last Glacial Maximum and annual mean temperature), soil nutrient availability (Soil, including soil pH, and ratio of soil organic carbon to total nitrogen) and aboveground biomass (AGB) on species richness (SR) of early spring ephemeral plants. The blue and red line indicated the positive and negative path coefficients, respectively. * P< 0.05, **P< 0.01, ***P< 0.0001.

Fig. 4 Total effects of elevation, climate, soil nutrient availability and aboveground biomass on species richness of early spring annual ephemeral plants

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