武夷山植被带土壤微生物量沿海拔梯度的变化

土壤微生物量是陆地生态系统碳循环的重要组成部分,在森林生态系统物质循环和能量转化中占有特别重要的地位.以武夷山常绿阔叶林(EBF)、针叶林(CF)、亚高山矮林(DF)和高山草甸(AM)为试验对象,研究了土壤微生物量沿海拔梯度的变化特征.结果表明:在0～10cm土壤层,随着海拔高度的增加,年平均土壤微生物量增大,AM的年平均土壤微生物量为4.07 g·kg-1,分别为DF、CF和EBF的2.06、3.21倍和3.91倍;AM的年平均土壤微生物量显著大于DF、CF和AM(p<0.01),DF的年平均土壤微生物量显著大于EBF、CF(p<0.05),EBF和CF的年平均土壤微生物量无显著性差异(p>0.05),10～25cm土壤层的年平均土壤微生物量的变化规律与上层基本一致;在0～10cm土壤层,不同海拔年平均土壤微生物量分别与土壤有机碳、全氮、全硫含量以及土壤湿度呈显著正相关(p<0.05),在10～25cm土壤层,不同海拔年平均土壤微生物量分别与土壤有机碳、全氮含量呈显著正相关(p<0.05).研究表明,武夷山亚热带森林年平均土壤微生物量随海拔高度升高而增加,土壤有机碳、全氮、全硫和土壤湿度可能是调控土壤微生物量沿海拔梯度变化的主要因子.     

武夷山不同海拔植被土壤呼吸季节变化及对温度的敏感性

以武夷山国家级自然保护区为实验基地,研究了4种不同海拔高度上植物群落土壤呼吸速率的季节变化及其对温度的敏感性,以及与主要环境因子的关系.结果表明：4种不同海拔植物群落的土壤呼吸速率均具有明显且一致的季节变化,其中夏季土壤呼吸速率最大,为3.10～6.57 μmol CO₂·m^-2·s^-1,冬季最小,为0.27～1.15 μmol CO₂·m^-2·s^-1;土壤呼吸速率与土壤温度呈显著指数相关,不同样地土壤呼吸速率与土壤含水率和凋落物输入量的关系各不相同;高海拔地区土壤呼吸的Q₁₀值显著高于低海拔地区.在中亚热带地区,不同海拔土壤呼吸速率的季节波动主要受土壤温度的影响;在未来全球气候变暖的背景下,高海拔地区的土壤可能释放更多的CO₂.     

Different temporal trends in vascular plant and bryophyte communities along elevational gradients over four decades

Despite many studies showing biodiversity responses to warming, the generality of such responses across taxonomic groups remains unclear. Very few studies have tested for evidence of bryophyte community responses to warming, even though bryophytes are major contributors to diversity and functioning in many ecosystems. Here, we report an empirical study comparing long‐term change in bryophyte and vascular plant communities in two sites with contrasting long‐term warming trends, using “legacy” botanical records as a baseline for comparison with contemporary resurveys. We hypothesized that ecological changes would be greater in sites with a stronger warming trend and that vascular plant communities, with narrower climatic niches, would be more sensitive than bryophyte communities to climate warming. For each taxonomic group in each site, we quantified the magnitude of changes in species'' distributions along the elevation gradient, species richness, and community composition. We found contrasted temporal changes in bryophyte vs. vascular plant communities, which only partially supported the warming hypothesis. In the area with a stronger warming trend, we found a significant increase in local diversity and dissimilarity (β‐diversity) for vascular plants, but not for bryophytes. Presence–absence data did not provide sufficient power to detect elevational shifts in species distributions. The patterns observed for bryophytes are in accordance with recent literature showing that local diversity can remain unchanged despite strong changes in composition. Regardless of whether one taxon is systematically more or less sensitive to environmental change than another, our results suggest that vascular plants cannot be used as a surrogate for bryophytes in terms of predicting the nature and magnitude of responses to warming. Thus, to assess overall biodiversity responses to global change, abundance data from different taxonomic groups and different community properties need to be synthesized.     

不同程度人为干扰对古田山森林群落谱系结构的影响

群落谱系结构包含群落发育的历史信息,能从新的角度反映群落形成的生态过程.作者在浙江古田山自然保护区亚热带常绿阔叶林中选择了人为干扰强度不同的4种群落类型,以20 m×20 m为研究尺度探讨了不同干扰程度对群落谱系结构的影响.结果表明,人工林(类型Ⅰ)谱系结构发散;但间伐林(类型Ⅱ)、自然恢复林(类型Ⅲ)以及自然老龄林(类型Ⅳ)谱系结构聚集,且以类型Ⅱ和Ⅳ聚集度最高.进一步分析不同径级谱系结构发现,在中小径级(DBH≤5 cm和5 cm10 cm时,除了类型Ⅳ,其他3种群落都是谱系结构发散,这反映了在恢复早期种子扩散对这些林型群落构建影响较大:而皆伐后的演替和间伐增加了群落生境异质性,生境过滤作用增强,使类型Ⅱ、Ⅲ群落中小径级谱系结构表现为聚集;类型Ⅳ群落不同径级谱系结构均表现为聚集,可能与其稳定的生境过滤作用有关.     

Abundance,richness and composition of lianas in forest communities along an elevation gradient in New Caledonia

Background: Lianas are an abundantand dynamic component of tropical forests, and their abundance ispredicted to increase with global change. A better understandingof factors that explain their distribution is required, especially onoceanic islands for which few data are available.

Aims: Identifythe environmental factors that shape liana communities in NewCaledonian forests

Methods: We studied liana abundance,basal area, richness and climbing modes in 27 forest plots (20m × 20 m) along an elevation gradient (sea level to ca. 1000 ma.s.l.) that covers different forest types and precipitation regimes.

Results: We inventoried 992 lianas belonging to 71 species. The abundance and basal area decreased logarithmically withincreasing elevation while species richness tended to peak at midelevations.Twining lianas were the most abundant and species-richfunctional group. We found no clear relationship between climbingmodes and forest structure.

Conclusions: Our results show thatliana abundance decreases with increasing elevation in responseto lower precipitation in seasonal dry forest. At high elevation (600–1000 m a.s.l.), climbing secondary hemi-epiphytes replace lianasprobably as a result of climate-based niche differentiation. Variationof species richness along the gradient could not be explained byprecipitation or by forest structural parameters.     

Response to mowing of coastal brackish meadow plant communities along an elevational gradient

Over a six year period, 1979–1985, eight stands of till then ungrazed and unmown brackish meadow plant communities were treated by mowing once a year (August), in order to detect the response of the vegetation. The stands were distributed along a local elevation gradient, which was found to influence the composition of the vegetation through a complex-gradient, composed by unidirectional gradients in inundation, in ground water level and in Na as per cent of Ca+Mg+Na+K.
The mowing was carried out within 5 ×5 m treatment plots and the effect was indicated by quantitative analysis of the vegetation. A natural succession progressing at the locality, most distinctly manifested by expansion of Phragmites australis , was traced during the study period by means of unmown control plots.
The mowing caused increase in species diversity in all stands, mainly due to increase in evenness among the species.
The resistance of the stands to the mowing was found to differ in relation to elevation and to the initial composition of the vegetation. In upper geolittoral Festuca rubra stands the resistance was high and the mowing did not affect presence or colonisation of Phragmites . In upper-middle Festuca rubra stands resistance was lower, mainly indicated by suppression of Phragmites . Low elevation Scirpus maritimus reed beds on waterlogged soil was rather resistant, but four additional years of mowing led to a change into Agrostis stolonifera-Puccinellia maritima meadow. The resistance of low elevation Phragmites reed bed was low, as the mowing within a few years changed the reed bed into Agrostis stolonifera meadow.
The results were discussed in relation to the use of mowing as a nature conservation management tool in salt meadows.     

Contrasting patterns in leaf traits of Mediterranean shrub communities along an elevation gradient: measurements matter

Plant Ecology - We assessed the changes in community-weighted mean (CWM) and variability of specific leaf area (SLA) and leaf area (LA) of different Mediterranean shrub communities along an...     

Biomass and structure of planktonic communities along an air temperature gradient in subarctic Sweden

1. Air temperature will probably have pronounced effects on the composition of plankton communities in northern lake ecosystems, either via indirect effects on the export of essential elements from catchments or through direct effects of water temperature and the ice‐free period on the behaviour of planktonic organisms. 2. We assessed the role of temperature by comparing planktonic communities in 15 lakes along a 6 °C air temperature gradient in subarctic Sweden. 3. We found that the biomass of phytoplankton, bacterioplankton and the total planktonic biomass were positively related to air temperature, probably as a result of climatic controls on the export of nitrogen from the catchment (which affects phytoplankton biomass) and dissolved organic carbon (affecting bacterioplankton biomass). 4. The structure of the zooplankton community, and top down effects on phytoplankton, were apparently not related to temperature but mainly to trophic interactions ultimately dependent on the presence of fish in the lakes. 5. Our results suggest that air temperature regimes and long‐term warming can have strong effects on the planktonic biomass in high latitude lakes. Effects of temperature on the structure of the planktonic community might be less evident unless warming permits the invasion of fish into previous fishless lakes.     

A taxonomic and phylogenetic perspective on plant community assembly along an elevational gradient in subtropical forests

亚热带森林植物群落沿海拔梯度的分类与系统发育研究 生物多样性沿海拔梯度的分布格局已受到广泛关注。然而,生物多样性格局沿海拔梯度的变异及其潜在机制尚不清楚。整合生物多样性的多维度信息为理解群落构建机制提供了新思路。本研究在我国东部亚热带森林沿海拔270–1470 m的梯度上设置了17个木本植物固定样地,分析了沿海拔梯度植物群落 构建的生态和进化驱动力。基于样地内物种出现(0–1数据)和多度信息,计算群落内被子植物的物种和系统发育alpha和beta多样性、系统发育结构等,并量化多样性指标与微气候和地形之间的关系。研究发现,不论多度加权与否,物种alpha多样性均沿海拔升高而增加,物种和系统发育的相似性随海拔距离的增加而呈衰减趋势。然而,多度加权与否会形成不同的系统发育alpha多样性格局。对于系统发育结构而言,沿海拔增加并无明显趋势。地形和微气候是多样性格局和系统发育结构的主要驱动力。与未考虑物种多度的多样性指标相比,多度加权的指标与坡度和胸高断面积相关性更高。这些结果表明,由局域物种多度介导的确定性过程对沿海拔梯度的植物群落构建具有一定影响。     

Changing patterns of nest predation and predator communities along a tropical elevation gradient

Tropical montane communities host the world's highest beta diversity of birds, a phenomenon usually attributed to community turnover caused by changes in biotic and abiotic factors along elevation gradients. Yet, empirical data on most biotic factors are lacking. Nest predation is thought to be especially important because it appears to be common and can change selective pressures underlying life history traits, which can alter competitive interactions. We monitored 2538 nests, 338 of which had known nest predators, to evaluate if nest predation changes along a tropical elevational gradient. We found that nest predation decreased with elevation, reflecting the loss of lowland predators that do not tolerate colder climates. We found different “super” nest predators at each elevation that accounted for a high percentage of events, suggesting that selection pressures exerted by nest predator communities may be less diffuse than has been hypothesized, at least for birds nesting in the understory.     

青藏高原高寒草甸不同海拔梯度下土壤微生物群落碳代谢多样性

土壤微生物群落功能多样性对维持生态系统功能和稳定性具有非常重要的意义。为探究青藏高原高寒草甸不同海拔梯度下土壤微生物碳源利用差异以及影响机制,运用Biolog微平板技术,研究了西藏当雄县草原站4300—5100 m的6个不同海拔梯度下土壤微生物群落碳源代谢多样性。研究结果表明:(1)不同海拔下高寒草甸土壤微生物碳源的利用程度均随培养时间的延长而升高;微生物代谢活性和群落多样性指数均随海拔升高呈现先上升后下降的单峰变化趋势,整体表现4800 m4950 m4400 m4650 m5100 m4300 m;(2)主成分分析表明不同海拔显著影响了土壤微生物群落碳源代谢多样性,其中碳水化合物类、氨基酸类和胺类碳源是各海拔土壤微生物的偏好碳源;碳水化合物类、羧酸类、氨基酸类和胺类碳源的利用强度受海拔影响较大;(3)分类变异分析表明,土壤、植物和气候因素是影响不同海拔碳源利用变异的主要影响因子,可解释不同海拔的碳源利用差异的79.0%;排除环境因子之间的多重及交互作用,偏曼特尔检验表明土壤含水量、植被丰富度和年均降水量是影响不同海拔微生物碳源利用多样性的最重要的环境因子。综上,研究表明青藏高寒草甸不同海拔土壤微生物碳源代谢多样性呈现显著的海拔差异趋势,其海拔差异主要受到土壤含水量、植被丰富度和年均降水量的影响。     

Taxonomic,functional, and phylogenetic dimensions of rodent biodiversity along an extensive tropical elevational gradient

Relationships among taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic dimensions of biodiversity provide insight about the relative contributions of ecological and evolutionary processes in structuring local assemblages. We used data for rodent species distributions from an extensive tropical elevational gradient to 1) describe elevational gradients for each of three dimensions of biodiversity, 2) evaluate the sufficiency of species richness as a surrogate for other dimensions, and 3) quantify the relative support for mechanisms that increase or decrease phylogenetic or functional dispersion. Taxonomic biodiversity was quantified by species richness, as well as by richness, evenness, diversity, dominance, and rarity at generic and familial levels. Morphological and categorical traits were used to estimate functional biodiversity, and an ultrametric mammalian supertree was used as the basis for estimating phylogenetic biodiversity. Elevational gradients of each dimension of biodiversity were strong, with significant linear and non‐linear components based on orthogonal polynomial regression. Empirical linear and non‐linear regression components were consistently different than those expected based on species richness for generic, familial, and phylogenetic biodiversity, but not for functional biodiversity. Nevertheless, the congruence of dimensions of biodiversity based on correlation analyses indicated that any one dimension is a useful surrogate for the other dimensions for rodents at Manu. Given variation in species richness, assemblages from lowland rainforests comprised more biodiversity than expected, whereas assemblages from cloud and elfin forests represented less biodiversity than expected. Warm temperatures, vertical complexity of the vegetation, and high productivity likely facilitate niche differentiation in rainforests, whereas cricetid rodents are competitively superior to other clades in the less structurally complex, less productive, and colder, high elevation habitats.     

Intercontinental trends in functional and phylogenetic structure of stream fish assemblages

Understanding of community assembly has been improved by phylogenetic and trait‐based approaches, yet there is little consensus regarding the relative importance of alternative mechanisms and few studies have been done at large geographic and phylogenetic scales. Here, we use phylogenetic and trait dispersion approaches to determine the relative contribution of limiting similarity and environmental filtering to community assembly of stream fishes at an intercontinental scale. We sampled stream fishes from five zoogeographic regions. Analysis of traits associated with habitat use, feeding, or both resulted in more occurrences of trait underdispersion than overdispersion regardless of spatial scale or species pool. Our results suggest that environmental filtering and, to a lesser extent, species interactions were important mechanisms of community assembly for fishes inhabiting small, low‐gradient streams in all five regions. However, a large proportion of the trait dispersion values were no different from random. This suggests that stochastic factors or opposing assembly mechanisms also influenced stream fish assemblages and their trait dispersion patterns. Local assemblages tended to have lower functional diversity in microhabitats with high water velocity, shallow water depth, and homogeneous substrates lacking structural complexity, lending support for the stress‐dominance hypothesis. A high prevalence of functional underdispersion coupled with phylogenetic underdispersion could reflect phylogenetic niche conservatism and/or stabilizing selection. These findings imply that environmental filtering of stream fish assemblages is not only deterministic, but also influences assemblage structure in a fairly consistent manner worldwide.     

Size and structure of bacterial, fungal and nematode communities along an Antarctic environmental gradient

The unusually harsh environmental conditions of terrestrial Antarctic habitats result in ecosystems with simplified trophic structures, where microbial processes are especially dominant as drivers of soil-borne nutrient cycling. We examined soil-borne Antarctic communities (bacteria, fungi and nematodes) at five locations along a southern latitudinal gradient from the Falkland Islands (51 degrees S) to the base of the Antarctic Peninsula (72 degrees S), and compared principally vegetated vs. fell-field locations at three of these sites. Results of molecular (denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, real-time PCR), biochemical (ergosterol, phospholipid fatty acids) and traditional microbiological (temperature- and medium-related CFU) analyses were related to key soil and environmental properties. Microbial abundance generally showed a significant positive relationship with vegetation and vegetation-associated soil factors (e.g. water content, organic C, total N). Microbial community structure was mainly related to latitude or location and latitude-dependent factors (e.g. mean temperature, NO3, pH). Furthermore, strong interactions between vegetation cover and location were observed, with the effects of vegetation cover being most pronounced in more extreme sites. These results provide insight into the main drivers of microbial community size and structure across a range of terrestrial Antarctic and sub-Antarctic habitats, potentially serving as a useful baseline to study the impact of predicted global warming on these unique and pristine ecosystems.     

Structural and functional patterns of bacterial communities in response to protist predation along an experimental productivity gradient

Substrate supply and protist grazing are two of the most important forces that determine the composition and properties of bacterial assemblages. General ecological theory predicts that the relative importance of these factors is changing with the environmental productivity. In the present study, the interplay between bottom-up and top-down control was studied in a productivity gradient simulated in one-stage chemostats containing natural assemblages of freshwater bacteria and heterotrophic nanoflagellates. Bacterial assemblages in the chemostats differed strongly with respect to their morphological, physiological and compositional properties in the presence versus the absence of predators. However, theses differences were modified by the productivity gradient. Whereas in predator-free chemostats the mean abundance and biomass of bacteria increased proportionally with increasing substrate supply, in treatments that included flagellates bacterial production was largely channelled into predator biomass. The bacterial morphological diversity increased along the productivity gradient with increasing substrate input but even more so with predators. Proportional to the increasing substrate supply, predation shifted the remaining bacteria towards morphologically inedible forms. Predation also caused shifts in bacterial substrate-utilization profiles, and in bacterial community composition, as analysed by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism of PCR-amplified 16S-rRNA genes. Without predators, bacterial richness increased along the productivity gradient whereas with predators bacterial richness was higher at intermediate substrate levels. In accordance with ecological theory, these results demonstrated that predators influence all of the major characteristics of bacterial assemblages but the magnitude of this effect is modulated by the productivity of the system.     

Phylogenetic plant community structure along elevation is lineage specific

The trend of closely related taxa to retain similar environmental preferences mediated by inherited traits suggests that several patterns observed at the community scale originate from longer evolutionary processes. While the effects of phylogenetic relatedness have been previously studied within a single genus or family, lineage‐specific effects on the ecological processes governing community assembly have rarely been studied for entire communities or flora. Here, we measured how community phylogenetic structure varies across a wide elevation gradient for plant lineages represented by 35 families, using a co‐occurrence index and net relatedness index (NRI). We propose a framework that analyses each lineage separately and reveals the trend of ecological assembly at tree nodes. We found prevailing phylogenetic clustering for more ancient nodes and overdispersion in more recent tree nodes. Closely related species may thus rapidly evolve new environmental tolerances to radiate into distinct communities, while older lineages likely retain inherent environmental tolerances to occupy communities in similar environments, either through efficient dispersal mechanisms or the exclusion of older lineages with more divergent environmental tolerances. Our study illustrates the importance of disentangling the patterns of community assembly among lineages to better interpret the ecological role of traits. It also sheds light on studies reporting absence of phylogenetic signal, and opens new perspectives on the analysis of niche and trait conservatism across lineages.