Elevational diversity of terrestrial rainforest herbs: when the whole is less than the sum of its parts |
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Authors: | Sandra?Willingh?fer Email author" target="_blank">Daniele?CicuzzaEmail author Michael?Kessler |
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Institution: | 1.Department of Systematic Botany,Albrecht von Haller Institute of Plant Sciences,G?ttingen,Germany;2.Institute of Systematic Botany,University of Zürich,Zurich,Switzerland |
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Abstract: | We studied the species richness of herbaceous terrestrial plant species along an elevational gradient at 250–2425 m a.s.l.
in evergreen tropical forest in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. We recorded 302 species belonging to 51 families. Ferns and lycophytes
contributed 62% of the species, followed by monocots with 24% and dicots with 14%. Overall herb species richness did not show
any particular relation with elevation, while the richness of ferns increased significantly with elevation, monocots did not
show a pattern, and dicots showed a hump-shaped pattern with maximum richness at 1800 m. These patterns in turn were only
partly reflected in the patterns of the individual plant families making up each group. The independence of different taxa
was also reflected in their relationships to environmental factors (temperature, precipitation, and area): although, each
single family was related to one or several factors, at the group level and at the overall level these trends were lost. These
results show that interpreting diversity at higher taxonomic level may overlook important information at the family level
and raises the biologically intriguing question whether overall patterns of diversity result from a random accumulation of
group-specific patterns or if there is some interaction between groups (e.g., via competition and niche-pre-emption). |
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