Community Preferences of Woody Plant Species in a Heterogeneous Temperate Forest, China

Abstract

Diversified community types provide different microhabitats for plant growth. However, whether the distribution of species is random distribution or ecological specialization within different plant community types remains to be elucidated. Here, five 1 ha (100 m × 100 m) plots with different communities were established in a temperate forest. We examined community structure differences by non-metric multidimensional scaling and betadisper test, analyzed the species-community relationships by correlation network approach, and then the examined distribution preferences of woody plant species by torus-translation test. Results showed that the abundance, richness, and species composition of woody plants exhibited significant differences among the five communities. The specialization index showed that 42.83% of the species had the characteristics of distribution specialization for different communities. The torustranslation test showed that 85 species (86.74%) were positively associated with specific community. Our findings suggested that the distribution of woody plants species among different plant community types is not random but specialization. Different woody plant species have distinct specific preferences among various plant community types in temperate mountain forest. These findings provide new insights into the biodiversity conservation of woody plant species in temperate deciduous broad-leaved forests and indicate the potential importance of community partitioning for the maintenance of woody plant diversity.

Distribution of Woody Plant Species Among Different Disturbance Regimes of Forests in a Temperate Deciduous Broad-Leaved Forest

“…community structure of the four forests of different disturbance regimes. Important value was calculated as follows: IV = (relative abundance (%) + relative frequency (%) + relative breast height sectional area (%)/3 (Chen et al, 2020). Species accumulation curves of wood plants were drawn using "specaccum" function in vegan package of R to detect diversity difference among the four forests.…”

“…Differences in the richness and abundance of woody plants in the four communities were statistically analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis method. Betadisper test was conducted with the "vegan" package of R to determine the effects of forests of different disturbance regimes on woody plants (Oksanen et al, 2007;Chen et al, 2020).…”

“…Redundancy analysis (RDA) was used to evaluate the difference in topographic factors among different communities. Topographic factors include slope, aspect, elevation, and convex concave (Chen et al, 2020). RDA was completed with the "ggord" package of R (Pierre, 2007).…”

“…The "bipartite" package of R was used to construct a network structure of woody plants and different disturbance regimes of forests (Dormann et al, 2009). We used the H2 ′ metric of specialization and connectance index to evaluate the relationship between woody plants and different disturbance regimes of forests (Blüthgen et al, 2007;Chen et al, 2020). Species composition and species distribution preference in the four forests were analyzed by indicator species analysis and torus-translation test, respectively, to detect specificity of woody plants to different disturbance regimes of forests at the species level.…”

Changes in the Distribution Preference of Soil Microbial Communities During Secondary Succession in a Temperate Mountain Forest

“…The habitat division hypothesis provides a conceptual framework to explain the maintenance of soil microbial diversity (Silvertown, 2004;Chen et al, 2018b). Its core principle is to assume that environmental conditions are spatially structured and that this structure is reflected in the distribution of species through their association with different habitats (Svenning, 1999;Gao et al, 2017;Chen et al, 2018bChen et al, , 2020. However, most of these studies have focused on woody plant communities (Harms et al, 2001;Comita et al, 2007;Lai et al, 2009;Bin et al, 2016;Guo et al, 2017).…”