Habitat Fragmentation Drives Plant Community Assembly Processes across Life Stages.

ABSTRACT: Habitat fragmentation is one of the principal causes of biodiversity loss and hence understanding its impacts on community assembly and disassembly is an important topic in ecology. We studied the relationships between fragmentation and community assembly processes in the land-bridge island system of Thousand Island Lake in East China. We focused on the changes in species diversity and phylogenetic diversity that occurred between life stages of woody plants growing on these islands. The observed diversities were compared with the expected diversities from random null models to characterize assembly processes. Regression tree analysis was used to illustrate the relationships between island attributes and community assembly processes. We found that different assembly processes predominate in

SUBMITTER: Hu G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4948860 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature