Abstract
Species richness and turnover rates differed between the western and eastern aspects of Baima Snow Mountain: maximum species richness (94 species in a transect of 1000 m2) was recorded at 2800 m on the western aspect and at 3400 m on the eastern aspect (126 species), which also recorded a much higher value of gamma diversity (501 species) than the western aspect (300 species). The turnover rates were the highest in the transition zones between different vegetation types, whereas species-area curves showed larger within-transect beta diversity at middle elevations. The effect of elevation on alpha diversity was due mainly to the differences in seasonal temperature and moisture, and these environmental factors mattered more than spatial distances to the turnover rates along the elevation gradient, although the impact of the environmental factors differed with the growth form (herb, shrubs or trees) of the species. The differences in the patterns of plant biodiversity between the two aspects helped to assess several hypotheses that seek to explain such patterns, to highlight the impacts of contemporary climate and historical and regional factors and to plan biological conservation and forest management in this region more scientifically.
Highlights
Mountains are hotspots of biodiversity at global and regional scales [1,2]
Baima Snow Mountain (BSM) is the central section of the eastern-most of three parallel mountain ranges in the Three Parallel Rivers Region (TPRR), northwestern Yunnan Province, China
By examining plant diversity along the elevation gradient on the eastern and western aspects of this mountain, the present study aimed to explore the effects of elevation and aspect on plant species diversity and to separate the contribution of each of the different mechanisms that determine the structure of vegetation and plant diversity
Summary
The pattern of species richness along the slopes of mountains and the factors that determine such patterns have long been a topic of interest to ecologists and biogeographers [3]. The patterns of species diversity along elevation gradients have been studied for decades, and the results of these studies are well summarized [7,8], revealing the major determinants underlying the patterns of diversity, namely environmental filters [9,10], regional processes and evolutionary history [11,12,13], biological interactions [14] and spatial factors, such as area, dispersal limits and boundary constraints imposed by the elevation range of the mountains [15,16]. The collinearity of effects among the different hypotheses has been a critical obstacle to separating the distinct contribution of each of these possible mechanisms [8], a task made even more complex by the difference in the scale of their effects.
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