%0 Journal Article %A Jin-Shi XU %A Yong-Fu CHAI %A Xiao LIU %A Ming YUE %A Yao-Xin GUO %A Mu-Yi KANG %A Quan-Ru LIU %A Cheng-Yang ZHENG %A Cheng-Jun JI %A Ming YAN %A Feng ZHANG %A Xian-Ming GAO %A Ren-Qing WANG %A Fu-Chen SHI %A Qin-Di ZHANG %A Mao WANG %T Community assembly, diversity patterns and distributions of broad-leaved forests in North China %D 2019 %R 10.17521/cjpe.2018.0183 %J Chinese Journal of Plant Ecology %P 732-741 %V 43 %N 9 %X

Aims To understand the key processes driving the community assembly and diversity patterns in North China.
Methods We investigated species composition of 87 plots from 29 sites. We applied phylogenetic approach, combined with community distribution information, to assess the community structure and diversity along environmental gradients. We then performed a variance partition to explore the relative importance of each environmental factor that influencing the patterns of community assembly and diversity process and a canonical correspondence analysis to analyze reason of community distributions.
Important findings Similar communities showed similar habitat preferences, demonstrating that environments may shape species composition of the communities. The phylogenetic diversity showed a uni-modal pattern with the mean annual temperature (MAT), but increased with the mean annual precipitation (MAP), partly because of the strong disturbance in high-MAT regions. Temperature dominated the phylogenetic structure of the broad- leaved forests in North China. Environmental filtering dominate the community assembly processes in the areas with relatively low MAT. In addition, the effect of environment filtering increased with MAP.

%U https://www.plant-ecology.com/EN/10.17521/cjpe.2018.0183