Local and regional processes control species richness of plant communities: the species pool hypothesis

doi:10.3724/SP.J.1003.2009.09141

Abstract

Abstract:

Exploring the mechanisms underlying community species richness is a key issue in ecology and conservation biology, and many hypotheses based on small-scale, local processes have traditionally been used as explanations. The species pool hypothesis developed by Zobel et al. suggests that the variation in community species richness is not only associated with contemporary environmental factors and ecological processes (e.g. competition and predation), but also limited by the regional species pool. The regional species pool is the set of species in a certain region that are capable of coexisting in a target community, which is shaped by historical (e.g. glaciation and geological age) and regional processes (e.g. speciation, immigration, dispersion, and extinction). The species pool hypothesis suggests that the larger the area of a habitat type and the greater its geological age, the greater the opportunity for speciation and hence the larger the number of available species adapted to that particular habitat, which will in turn lead to higher community diversity. The species pool is generally studied at two spatial scales: the regional and the actual scales. While the regional species pool is primarily determined by biogeographic processes, the actual species pool (species present in the target community) is determined by both ecological processes (e.g. competition) and the regional pool. In this review, we introduce and discuss the concepts relating to, and evidence for the species pool hypothesis, together with methods for estimating the species pool.

Key words: competition, disturbance, species richness, species pool, habitat, community productivity, local process, regional process

Jingyun Fang, Xiangping Wang, Zhiyao Tang. Local and regional processes control species richness of plant communities: the species pool hypothesis[J]. Biodiv Sci, 2009, 17(6): 605-612.

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URL: https://www.biodiversity-science.net/EN/10.3724/SP.J.1003.2009.09141

https://www.biodiversity-science.net/EN/Y2009/V17/I6/605

Figures/Tables 5

Fig. 1 The “hump-backed” model of Grime (1979). The model incorporates five processes that affect community species richness: (1) dominance; (2) stress; (3) disturbance; (4) niche differentiation; and (5) colonization.

Fig. 2 Relationship between species pools at regional, local and community scales, adapted from Zobel (1997).

Fig. 3 Changes in the correlation coefficient of the relationship between vascular plant species richness and soil pH with latitude. The relationship between species richness and soil pH shows a negative correlation at low latitudes (below the dashed line), while a positive relationship at high latitudes(P?rtel, 2002).

Fig. 4 Changes in productivity-plant diversity relationships with latitude. Y axis is the proportion of unimodal (A) and positive (B) relationships to cases in which no significant relations are found between productivity and diversity. With increasing latitude, the proportion of unimodal relationships increased remarkably (R2 = 0.72, P = 0.034) while that of positive relationships decreased (R2 = 0.93, P = 0.002) (P?rtel et al., 2007).

Fig. 5 Two theoretical relationships between local and regional species richness. For the unsaturated relationship (Type I), community richness is not limited by biotic interactions in the local habitat and increases proportionately with regional richness. In the saturated relationship (Type II), however, biotic interactions limit community richness which saturates and becomes independent of regional species pool. Communities in the real world probably fall on a continuum between the two extremes (Gaston, 2000).

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