Abstract
Plant functional diversity in community has become a key point in ecology studies recently. The development of species functional diversity was reviewed in the present work. Based on the former original research papers and reviews, we discussed the concept and connotation and put forward a new definition of functional diversity that refers to the change of species functions in communities, and species functions are reflected by functional traits during the completion of their life histories. The ecological process in ecosystems or ecosystem function is closely related to functional diversity. The present quantitative methods for functional diversity analysis were reviewed and their validity needs to be evaluated by more application studies, and new effective methods need to be developed. The questions and problems in functional diversity studies were discussed and will be solved in the future research, and the perspectives for functional diversity research were also discussed in this review. Key words : Functional diversity, community structure, ecosystem function, quantitative methodology, ecology theory.
Highlights
General interest in biodiversity has grown rapidly in recent decades, in parallel with the growing concern about nature conservation generally, largely as a consequence of accelerating rates of natural habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and degradation, and resulting extinctions of species (Zhang, 2003; 2005)
Based on the former original research papers and reviews, we discussed the concept and connotation and put forward a new definition of functional diversity that refers to the change of species functions in communities, and species functions are reflected by functional traits during the completion of their life histories
FRci refers to the functional richness of functional character c in community i, SFci is the niche space filled by species within the community, Rc is the absolute range of the character
Summary
General interest in biodiversity has grown rapidly in recent decades, in parallel with the growing concern about nature conservation generally, largely as a consequence of accelerating rates of natural habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and degradation, and resulting extinctions of species (Zhang, 2003; 2005). Species diversity is the main content of biodiversity, which study species composition and coexistence conditions in a community or ecosystem from taxonomy, systematics and biogeography (Thompson et al, 1996; Westoby et al, 2002). For studying a number of key questions on species diversity and ecosystem function, some observations, experiments, theoretical analysis have been widely expanded, and some meaningful results have been obtained, but no conclusion has been generally recognized on many issues, and there are still heated debates (Loreau et al, 2001). For understanding the relationship between species diversity and ecosystem functioning, some ecologists thought that ecosystem function is subject to influence or control of species diversity, and they carried out some experiments to simulate the loss of species diversity, and monitor system function changes
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