Abstract
Aggregating diverse plant species into a few functional groups based on functional traits provides new insights for promoting landscape planning and conserving biodiversity in species-diverse regions. Ecophysiological traits are the basis of the functioning of an ecosystem. However, studies related to the identification of functional groups based on plant ecophysiological traits in tropical forests are still scarce because of the inherent difficulties in measuring them. In this study, we measured five ecophysiological traits: net photosynthetic capacity (Amax), maximum stomatal conductance (gmax), water use efficiency (WUE), transpiration rate (Trmmol), and specific leaf areas (SLA) for 87 plant species dominant in a chronosequence of secondary succession, using four time periods (5 year-primary, 15 year-early, and 40 year-middle successional stages after clear cutting and old growth) in the tropical montane rainforest on Hainan Island, China. These species were grouped using hierarchical cluster analysis and non-metric multidimensional scaling. Finally, the changes in the composition of functional groups and species richness along the chronosequence were analyzed. Results showed that the plant species in the tropical montane rainforest could be classified into eight distinct functional groups. The richness of functional groups was low during the initial early stage and increased as the early and middle stages progressed, and then declined in the late successional stage. The dominant functional groups in the primary stages had the highest Amax, gmax, Trmmol, and SLA, as well as the lowest WUE, while those in the early and middle successional stages had functional traits at a moderate level, and at the late stage they had the lowest Amax, gmax, Trmmol, and SLA, and highest WUE. Our study showed that the diverse plant species in the tropical montane rainforest could be grouped into a few functional groups according to major ecophysiological traits, and the composition and relative abundance of different groups changed with the successional dynamics of the forest ecosystem.
Highlights
Plant functional groups (PFGs) are groups of species that share similar morphological and physiological attributes, use similar resources, and play similar roles in a particular ecosystem [1].PFGs can be divided into functional effect and functional response groups based on each group’sForests 2019, 10, 1134; doi:10.3390/f10121134 www.mdpi.com/journal/forestsForests 2019, 10, 1134 function and/or adaptive responses to environmental variables in an ecosystem
The composition of PFGs and the dynamics along differing successional stages of tropical montane rain forest (TMRF) were analyzed based on identified functional groups
The 87 main species in the TMRF in Jianfengling, Hainan Island were aggregated into eight PFGs
Summary
Plant functional groups (PFGs) are groups of species that share similar morphological and physiological attributes, use similar resources, and play similar roles in a particular ecosystem [1]. Forests 2019, 10, 1134 function and/or adaptive responses to environmental variables in an ecosystem The former refers to groups with a similar effect on one or several ecosystem functions such as primary production and nutrient cycling [2,3], and the latter refers to groups with a similar response to particular environmental factors such as resource availability, disturbance, and drought stress [4,5,6]. Aggregating species into functional groups is a common method useful for reducing the complexity of diverse ecosystems (e.g., tropical rain forest communities) [7,8]. In doing so, the enormous complexity of individual species and populations needs to be summarized into a relatively small number of general and recurrent patterns [11,12]
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