Abstract
We conducted a field study to determine whether species composition and environmental relationships were scale dependent among the strata of a temperate deciduous forest. We compiled tree basal area, woody understory density, field layer cover and three environmental variables from 378 permanent plots in ten 7–386 ha sites in the 294,455 ha Shawnee National Forest, southern Illinois, USA. The effect of changing sample foci (area of inference) without changing the extent (geographic space) on the relationship between species composition and environmental factors was quantified using Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) and Procrustes analysis separately for each stratum. Species composition-environment relationships showed a separation of sites based on their geographic location and bedrock. Species data collected from these heterogeneous and hierarchically structured habitats across scales exhibited varying degree of specialization depending on the habitat. NMDS showed that the species composition-e...
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