Abstract
Understanding community assembly mechanisms is helpful to predict community dynamics. To explore which community assembly mechanism(s) drive(s) the grassland restoration in semi-arid region, we investigated the relationships between plant trait and species relative abundance (SRA), and estimated community functional diversity indices for each community under different treatments (enclosure, grazing and mowing treatment) in a restoration region of Stipa grandis – Leymus chinensis communities in the northern China from 2010 to 2012. There was a high fraction of significant relationships between trait value and SRA, suggesting that niche theory structured the grassland restoration in this region. The functional richness was higher and the functional divergence was lower in the enclosure community than that in the grazing or mowing community, and significantly positive plant height - SRA relationship was found in the enclosure community. These findings demonstrated that limiting similarity based on niche theory was more important in structuring the enclosure community and that environmental filtering based on niche theory played a more important role in driving the grazing or mowing community. Only the factor of year significantly affected the functional evenness (FEve), and the lowest FEve in 2011 implied that the relatively lower precipitation could enhance the effect of limiting similarity on community assembly in the semi-arid grassland.
Highlights
Understanding community assembly mechanisms is helpful to predict community dynamics
Niche theory assumes that species relative abundance (SRA) within a local community is driven by the performance-related traits of co-occurring species, significant relationships between plant trait of co-occurring species and their corresponding SRA are expected[4,5,6]
The present study found that the percentage of significant plant trait - SRA relationships was higher than random expectation (5%), indicating that niche theory played more important role in affecting the community restoration in the study region
Summary
Understanding community assembly mechanisms is helpful to predict community dynamics. To explore which community assembly mechanism(s) drive(s) the grassland restoration in semi-arid region, we investigated the relationships between plant trait and species relative abundance (SRA), and estimated community functional diversity indices for each community under different treatments (enclosure, grazing and mowing treatment) in a restoration region of Stipa grandis – Leymus chinensis communities in the northern China from 2010 to 2012. The functional richness was higher and the functional divergence was lower in the enclosure community than that in the grazing or mowing community, and significantly positive plant height - SRA relationship was found in the enclosure community These findings demonstrated that limiting similarity based on niche theory was more important in structuring the enclosure community and that environmental filtering based on niche theory played a more important role in driving the grazing or mowing community. If the RSRA through time of the dominant native species is significantly higher than zero while that of the problematic species is significantly lower than zero, the community is restoring but does not reach the climax status on the condition that these findings were not influenced by year-to-year fluctuation[16]
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