Abstract
Bamboo has invaded native forests worldwide, and its aggressive spread by rhizomes facilitates patch expansion and the eventual replacement of adjacent forests. However, fine-scale studies of the spatial pattern and competitive relationships of bamboo in native forests are still lacking. We obtained data from nine plots in a native south subtropical rainforest in Guizhou Province, northwest China. Pair-correlation functions indicated that competition caused by bamboo expansion has not led to large-scale regular spatial distributions in bamboo forest and negative density-related dependence mechanisms regulating the spatial pattern of the native forest community. Marked correlation functions indicated small bamboo in clusters form colony patches that grow around the larger mature trees, resulting in patch expansion in the native forest community. Mark variogram functions identified significant positive spatial autocorrelation of moso bamboo caused by interactions with similar-sized trees within colony patches. This study showed that moso bamboo has colonized and expanded within the native forest community. Compared to the native forest species, the strategy of patch expansion and equal tree sizes in colony patches of moso bamboo could prevent regular distribution trend and size-asymmetric competition between nearby bamboo for the asymmetric and limited sources (i.e., light) in the forest, enhancing the persistence of moso bamboo in the native forest in our study stand located in a south subtropical rainforest in a river valley.
Highlights
Over the past several decades, planetary-scale global changes have intensified, and human activities such as the transformation of natural habitats for agricultural land use is one of the most important factors causing global climate change
All stands were composed of moso bamboo (MB) and. native trees (NTs) except the early plots, but the stand community structure and composition were quite different (Table 2)
The research showed that the moso bamboo has colonized and expanded within the native forest, leading to many native trees (NTs) gradually being replaced, thereby reducing species diversity
Summary
Over the past several decades, planetary-scale global changes have intensified, and human activities such as the transformation of natural habitats for agricultural land use is one of the most important factors causing global climate change. Climate change causes fragmentation of natural vegetation, thereby altering ecological communities. Monoculture oil palm rubber plantations in continental South East Asia have turned some high-biodiversity land into economically unsustainable plantations [5,6]. In this vein, the proliferation of bamboo plantations has attracted increasing attention [7,8,9,10,11].
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