Morphometric traits capture the climatically driven species turnover of 10 spruce taxa across China.

ABSTRACT: This study explored the relative roles of climate and phylogenetic background in driving morphometric trait variation in 10 spruce taxa in China. The study further addressed the hypothesis that these variations are consistent with species turnover on climatic gradients. Nine morphometric traits of leaves, seed cones, and seeds for the 10 studied spruce taxa were measured at 504 sites. These data were analyzed in combination with species DNA sequences from NCBI GenBank. We detected the effects of phylogeny and climate through trait-variation-based K statistics and phylogenetic eigenvector regression (PVR) analyses. Multivariate analyses were performed to detect trait variation along climatic gradients with species replacement. The estimated K-values for the nine studied morphometric traits

SUBMITTER: Li H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4725448 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature