The Significant Impact of Lost Species' Identity, Number and Abundance on Functional Structure of Alpine Meadow.

ABSTRACT: Biodiversity, the cornerstone of ecosystem functions and services, faces threats from anthropogenic climate change. However, it remains unclear how species loss, including abundance, number, and identity of lost species, would alter the functional structure of alpine meadow plant communities. Through a species removal experiment conducted in an alpine meadow of the central Tibetan Plateau, we found that removing common species typically altered the functional structure of plant communities. Changes in community functional structure were highly positively correlated with both the number of species removed and the degree of abundance loss. Beyond this, species removal treatments had significant direct effects on community functional structure, as revealed by a partial least squares path mode

SUBMITTER: Yang Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12522019 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature