TESTING THE NEUTRAL THEORY OF PLANT COMMUNITIES IN SUBALPINE MEADOW

doi:10.3773/j.issn.1005-264x.2008.02.011

Abstract

Abstract:

Aims We tested the neutral theory of biodiversity on subalpine meadows of the eastern Tibetan Plateau that exhibited comparatively complicated species composition. Our objective was to explain the species abundance distribution pattern and the underlying mechanism of biodiversity.
Methods We fit the neutral model to a randomly sampled data set obtained in three different habitats (north-facing slope, level field and south-facing slope) and used three methods to test the fitness of the neutral model to the real community: confidence interval, goodness of fit and diversity index.
Important findings We found no significant difference (p>0.05) between the neutral theory predictions and observed species abundance distributions in the three habitats according to the goodness of fit method. The observed data nearly completely fall into 95% confidence intervals of the neutral model predictions (only one out of 63 species in level field communities and 2 out of 75 species in the north-facing slope communities deviate from the 95% confidence interval). There is no significant difference between the neutral theory predictions and observed species abundance patterns, in which the fit of richness predictions is the best (0.49<p<0.56) and the fitness of evenness predictions is relatively poor. However, for the three different habitats, the fitness of these three indices in north-facing slope communities is perfect and the p-values vary between 0.49 and 0.70, but the fitness in level field communities is poorer (p-value of the Simpson diversity index is less than 0.1). Although the test results of the neutral theory by three different test methods and habitats are somewhat different, we conclude that the neutral model can predict species abundance distribution patterns in the three habitats of subalpine meadow.

Key words: neutral theory, biodiversity, subalpine meadow, abundance

DU Xiao-Guang, ZHOU Shu-Rong. TESTING THE NEUTRAL THEORY OF PLANT COMMUNITIES IN SUBALPINE MEADOW[J]. Chin J Plant Ecol, 2008, 32(2): 347-354.

Add to citation manager EndNote|Ris|BibTeX

URL: https://www.plant-ecology.com/EN/10.3773/j.issn.1005-264x.2008.02.011

https://www.plant-ecology.com/EN/Y2008/V32/I2/347

Figures/Tables 5

Fig.2 The Preston distribution of expected abundance by the standard neutral model (open bars) and observed abundance (filled bars) Y-axis denote species number by the Preston distribution, i.e.,the first histogram bar represents Ф1/2, the second bar Ф1/2+Ф2/2, the third bar Ф2/2+Ф3+Ф4/2,the fourth bar Ф4/2+Ф5+Ф6+Ф7+Ф8/2,and so on (Фi denote the number of species whose abundance is i)

Table 1 Summary of confidence envelope analysis

生境类型 Habitat type	置信区间之上的物种数 Over-abundance	置信区间之下的物种数 Under-abundance	个体总数 Total individual	物种数 Species richness	θ	m
阴坡North-facing slope	0	2	14 223	75	31.51	0.003 8
阳坡South-facing slope	0	0	6 696	72	21.36	0.022 5
滩地Plain field	1	0	5 247	63	24.44	0.01

Fig.1 The tests of the neutral model by confidence interval method in plants communities in three different types of habitats

Table 2 The goodness of fit between the neutral theory predictions and observed species abundance patterns

生境类型 Habitat type	df	χ²	p
阴坡 North-facing slope	6	8.661 6	0.193 5
阳坡 South-facing slope	6	3.437 5	0.752 3
滩地 Plain field	4	1.679 4	0.794 5

Fig.3 The p-value of the expected diversity indexes by neutral model The open squares, open circles and open triangles denote p-values of evenness index and richness index in the plain field, south-facing slope and north-facing slope, respectively. The filled squares, filled circles and filled triangles denote p-values of evenness index and diversity index respectively in the plain field, south-facing slope and north-facing slope. The area enclosed by dashed lines indicate the 95%-confidence interval

References 53

[1]	Abrams PA (2001). A world without competition. Nature, 412, 858-859.
[2]	Alonso D, Etienne RS, McKane AJ (2006). The merits of neutral theory. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 21, 451-457. DOI URL PMID
[3]	Bell G (2000). The distribution of abundance in neutral communities. The American Naturalist, 155, 606-617.
[4]	Bell G (2001). Neutral macroecology. Science, 293, 2413-2418.
[5]	Chapin FS Ⅲ, Zavaleta ES, Eviner VT, Naylor RL, Vitousek PM, Reynolds HL, Hooper DU, Lavorel S, Sala OE, Hobbie SE, Mack C, Díaz S (2000). Consequences of changing biodiversity. Nature, 405, 234-242. DOI URL PMID
[6]	Chase JM (2005). Towards a really unified theory for metacommunities. Functional Ecology, 19, 182-186.
[7]	Chave J (2004). Neutral theory and community ecology. Ecology Letters, 7, 241-253.
[8]	Chesson P (2000). Mechanisms of maintenance of species diversity. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 31, 343-366.
[9]	Costanza R, D'Arge R, De Groot R, Farber S, Grasso M, Hannon B, Limburg K, Naeem S, O'Neill VR, Paruelo J, Raskin RG, Sutton P, Belt VDM (1997). The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature, 387, 253-260.
[10]	Du GZ (杜国祯), Qin GL (覃光莲), Li ZZ (李自珍), Liu ZH (刘正恒), Dong GS (董高生) (2003). Relationship betweenspecies richness and productivity in an Alpine plant community. Acta Phytoecologica Sinica (植物生态学报), 27, 125-132. (in Chinese with English abstract)
[11]	Du GZ (杜国祯), Wang G (王刚) (1995). Succession and changes of grassland quality of the artificial grassland communities in subalpine meadow in Gannan. Acta Botanica Sinica (植物学报), 37, 306-313. (in Chinese with English abstract)
[12]	Efron B, Tibshirani RJ (1993). An Introduction to the Bootstrap. Chapman and Hall, London.
[13]	Etienne RS (2005). A new sampling formula for neutral biodiversity. Ecology Letters, 8, 253-260.
[14]	Etienne RS, Olff H (2004). A novel genealogical approach to neutral biodiversity theory. Ecology Letters, 7, 170-175.
[15]	Etienne RS, Olff H (2005). Confronting different models of community structure to species-abundance data: a Bayesian model comparison. Ecology Letters, 8, 493-504.
[16]	Gravel D, Canham CD, Beaudet M, Messier C (2006). Reconciling niche and neutrality: the continuum hypothesis. Ecology Letters, 9, 399-409.
[17]	Harpole WS, Tilman D (2006). Non-neutral patterns of species abundance in grassland communities. Ecology Letters, 9, 15-23.
[18]	Harte J (2003). Tail of death and resurrection. Nature, 424, 1006-1007.
[19]	He F (2005). Deriving a neutral model of species abundance from fundamental mechanisms of population dynamics. Functional Ecology, 19, 187-193.
[20]	Hubbell SP (1979). Tree dispersion,abundance,and diversity in a tropical dry forest. Science, 203, 1299-1309. URL PMID
[21]	Hubbell SP (2001). The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
[22]	Hubbell SP (2005a). Neutral theory in community ecology and the hypothesis of functional equivalence. Functional Ecology, 19, 166-172.
[23]	Hubbell SP (2005b). The neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography and Stephen Jay Gould. Paleobiology, 31, 122-132.
[24]	Hubbell SP (2006). Neutral theory and the evolution of ecological equivalence. Ecology, 87, 1387-1398.
[25]	Leibold MA, McPeek MA (2006). Coexistence of the niche and neutral perspectives in community ecology. Ecology, 87, 1399-1410. DOI URL PMID
[26]	Levins R (1970). Extinction some mathematical questions in biology. In: Gerstenhaber M ed. Lectures on Mathematics in the Life Sciences. Vol. 2, 75-107.
[27]	MacArthur RH, Wilson EO (1963). An equilibrium theory of insular zoogeography. Evolution, 17, 373-387.
[28]	MacArthur RH, Wilson EO (1967). The Theory of Island Biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
[29]	Magurran AE, Henderson PA (2003). Explaining the excess of rare species in natural species abundance distributions. Nature, 422, 881-885. URL PMID
[30]	May RM (1997). Ecology and Evolution of Communities. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 81-120.
[31]	McGill BJ (2003). A test fo the unified neutral theory of biodiversity. Nature, 422, 881-885.
[32]	McGill BJ, Maurer BA, Weiher E (2006). Empirical evaluation of neutral theory. Ecology, 87, 1411-1423.
[33]	McKane AJ, Alonso D, Sole RV (2004). Analytic solution of Hubbell's model of local community dynamics. Theoretical Population Biology, 65, 67-73.
[34]	Nee S (2005). The neutral theory of biodiversity: do the numbers add up? Functional Ecology, 19, 173-176.
[35]	Olszewski TD, Erwin DH (2004). Dynamic response of Permian brachiopod communities to long-term environmental change. Nature, 428, 738-741. DOI URL PMID
[36]	Pacala SW, Tilman D (1993). Limiting similarity in mechanistic and spatial models of plant competition in heterogeneous environments. The American Naturalist, 143, 222-257.
[37]	Poulin R (2004). Parasites and the neutral theory of biodiversity. Ecography, 27, 119-123.
[38]	Purves DW, Pacala SW (2005). Biotic Interactions in the Tropics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 107-138.
[39]	Qiu B (邱波), Ren QJ (任青吉), Luo YJ (罗燕江), Du GZ (杜国祯) (2004). Study on α diversity and β diversity of plant community of different habitats in alpine meadow. Acta Botanica Boreali-Occidentalisa Sinica (西北植物学报), 24, 655-661. (in Chinese with English abstract)
[40]	Silvertown J (2004). Plant coexistence and the niche. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 19, 605-611.
[41]	Tilman D (2004). Niche tradeoffs, neutrality, and community structure: a stochastic theory of resource competition, invasion, and community assembly. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 101, 10854-10861.
[42]	Turnbull LA, Manley L, Rees M (2005). Niches, rather than neutrality, structure a grassland pioneer guild. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 272, 1357-1364.
[43]	Vallade M, Houchmandzadeh B (2003). Analytical solution of a neutral model of biodiversity. Physical Review E, 68, 61902-61905.
[44]	Volkov I, Banavar JR, He F, Hubbell SP, Maritan A (2005). Density dependence explains tree species abundance and diversity in tropical forests. Nature, 438, 658-661.
[45]	Volkov I, Banavar JR, Hubbell SP, Maritan A (2003). Neutral theory and relative species abundance in ecology. Nature, 424, 1035-1037.
[46]	Walker SC, Cyr H (2006). Testing the standard neutral model of biodiversity in lake communities. Oikos, 116, 143-155.
[47]	Whitfield J (2002). Neutrality versus the niche. Nature, 417, 480-481.
[48]	Wootton JT (2005). Field parameterization and experimental test of the neutral theory of biodiversity. Nature, 433, 309-312.
[49]	Yu DW, Terborgh JW, Potts MD (1998). Can high tree species richness be explained by Hubbell's null model? Ecology Letters, 1, 193-199.
[50]	Zhang DY (张大勇) (2000). Researches on Theoretical Ecology (理论生态学研究). Higher Education Press, Beijing. (in Chinese)
[51]	Zhang DY, Lin K (1997). The effects of competitive asymmetry on the rate of competitive displacement: how robust is Hubbell's community drift model? Journal of Theoretical Biology, 188, 361-367.
[52]	Zhou SR, Zhang DY (2006). Allee effects and the neutral theory of biodiversity. Functional Ecology, 20, 509-513.
[53]	Zhou SR (周淑荣), Zhang DY (张大勇) (2006). Neutral theory in community ecology. Journal of Plant Ecology (Chinese Version) (formerly Acta Phytoecologica Sinica) (植物生态学报). 30, 868-877. (in Chinese with English abstract)