The mid-domain effect in flowering phenology

Abstract

The timing of flowering is an important driver of species distribution and community assembly patterns. However, we still have much to learn about the factors that shape flowering diversity (i.e., number of species flowering per period) in plant communities. One potential explanation of flowering diversity is the mid-domain effect, which states that geometric constraints on species ranges within a bounded domain (space or time) will yield a mid-domain peak in diversity regardless of ecological factors. Here, we determine whether the mid-domain effect explains peak flowering time (i.e., when most species of communities are flowering) across China. We used phenological data of 16,267 herbaceous and woody species from the provincial Flora in China and species distribution data from the Chinese Vascular Plant Distribution Database to determine relationships between the observed number of species flowering and the number of species flowering as predicted by the mid-domain effect model, as well as between three climatic variables (mean minimum monthly temperature, mean monthly precipitation, and mean monthly sunshine duration). We found that the mid-domain effect explained a significant proportion of the temporal variation in flowering diversity across all species in China. Further, the mid-domain effect explained a greater proportion of variance in flowering diversity at higher latitudes than at lower latitudes. The patterns of flowering diversity for both herbaceous and woody species were related to both the mid-domain effect and environmental variables. Our findings indicate that including geometric constraints in conjunction with abiotic and biotic predictors will improve predictions of flowering diversity patterns.