The environment, not space, dominantly structures the landscape patterns of the richness and composition of the tropical understory vegetation.

ABSTRACT: The mechanisms driving the spatial patterns of species richness and composition are essential to the understanding of biodiversity. Numerous studies separately identify the contributions of the environment (niche process) and space (neutral process) to the species richness or composition at different scales, but few studies have investigated the contributions of both types of processes in the two types of data at the landscape scale. In this study, we partitioned the spatial variations in all, exotic and native understory plant species richness and composition constrained by environmental variables and space in 134 plots that were spread across 10 counties in Hainan Island in southern China. The 134 plots included 70 rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) plantation plots, 50 eucalyptus (Eucalyptus u

SUBMITTER: Hu YH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3838366 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature