Detangling the Effects of Environmental Filtering and Dispersal Limitation on Aggregated Distributions of Tree and Shrub Species: Life Stage Matters.

ABSTRACT: The pervasive pattern of aggregated tree distributions in natural communities is commonly explained by the joint effect of two clustering processes: environmental filtering and dispersal limitation, yet little consensus remains on the relative importance of the two clustering processes on tree aggregations. Different life stages of examined species were thought to be one possible explanation of this disagreement, because the effect of environmental filtering and dispersal limitation are expected to increase and decrease with tree life stages, respectively. However, few studies have explicitly tested these expectations. In this study, we evaluated these expectations by three different methods (species-habitat association test based on Poisson Clustering model and spatial point pattern analy

SUBMITTER: Yang QS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4882024 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature