Population Dynamics in Community Succession Process of the Protection Forest in the Lower Reaches of the Tarim River, China

Abstract

In this paper, the niche breadth and overlap value of dominant species is calculated and analyzed along the community gradients to study population dynamics in the protection forest, Xinjiang, China. The main results are as follows. After four years, the amount of populations are increasing as a result of some local species naturally occurred or invaded. And seven dominant species including three native local species were selected from artificial-natural communities. Seven years later, Tamarix ramosissima becomes dominant species while P. communis was absent and H. glomeratus became subdominant species in communities under water stress-tolerant condition. And populations are decreased. The niche breadths of dominant species are ordered. Among dominant species, the niche overlap value between C. caput-medusae and P. euphratica is always the largest one. In addition, there is no relation between niche breadth and niche overlap of dominant species in community basing on the years data analysis, which is not in accordance with previous papers.