Abstract

BackgroundUnderstanding altitudinal patterns of biological diversity and their underlying mechanisms is critically important for biodiversity conservation in mountainous regions. The contribution of area to plant diversity patterns is widely acknowledged and may mask the effects of other determinant factors. In this context, it is important to examine altitudinal patterns of corrected taxon richness by eliminating the area effect. Here we adopt two methods to correct observed taxon richness: a power-law relationship between richness and area, hereafter “method 1”; and richness counted in equal-area altitudinal bands, hereafter “method 2”. We compare these two methods on the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, which is the nearest large-scale altitudinal gradient to the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere.ResultsWe find that seed plant species richness, genus richness, family richness, and species richness of trees, shrubs, herbs and Groups I–III (species with elevational range size <150, between 150 and 500, and >500 m, respectively) display distinct hump-shaped patterns along the equal-elevation altitudinal gradient. The corrected taxon richness based on method 2 (TRcor2) also shows hump-shaped patterns for all plant groups, while the one based on method 1 (TRcor1) does not. As for the abiotic factors influencing the patterns, mean annual temperature, mean annual precipitation, and mid-domain effect explain a larger part of the variation in TRcor2 than in TRcor1.ConclusionsIn conclusion, for biodiversity patterns on the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, method 2 preserves the significant influences of abiotic factors to the greatest degree while eliminating the area effect. Our results thus reveal that although the classical method 1 has earned more attention and approval in previous research, method 2 can perform better under certain circumstances. We not only confirm the essential contribution of method 1 in community ecology, but also highlight the significant role of method 2 in eliminating the area effect, and call for more application of method 2 in further macroecological studies.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40064-016-3052-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Highlights

  • Understanding altitudinal patterns of biological diversity and their underlying mechanisms is critically important for biodiversity conservation in mountainous regions

  • Effect of interpolation According to Vetaas and Grytnes (2002), we should rule out the possibility that the interpolation approach generates an artificial hump-shaped pattern in species richness

  • We evaluated the effect of area on taxon richness patterns (TRobs) and invoked two methods to calculate areacorrected taxon richness (TRcor1 and TRcor2)

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Summary

Introduction

Understanding altitudinal patterns of biological diversity and their underlying mechanisms is critically important for biodiversity conservation in mountainous regions. The contribution of area to plant diversity patterns is widely acknowledged and may mask the effects of other determinant factors In this context, it is important to examine altitudinal patterns of corrected taxon richness by eliminating the area effect. We adopt two methods to correct observed taxon richness: a power-law relationship between richness and area, hereafter “method 1”; and richness counted in equal-area altitudinal bands, hereafter “method 2”. We compare these two methods on the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, which is the nearest large-scale altitudinal gradient to the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere. It has been broadly recognized that area is a decisive factor shaping altitudinal taxon richness patterns (Rahbek 1997) and that the area of altitudinal bands alone could account for a large percentage of the variation in taxon richness (Bachman et al 2004; Fu et al 2004; Kattan and Franco 2004; McCain 2007)

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