Shifts in Plant Community Assembly Processes across Growth Forms along a Habitat Severity Gradient: A Test of the Plant Functional Trait Approach.

ABSTRACT: Species respond to changes in their environments. A core goal in ecology is to understand the process of plant community assembly in response to a changing climate. Examining the performance of functional traits and trait-based assembly patterns across species among different growth forms is a useful way to explore the assembly process. In this study, we constructed a habitat severity gradient including several environment factors along a 2300 m wide elevational range at Taibai Mountain, central China. Then we assessed the shift on functional trait values and community assembly patterns along this gradient across species among different growth forms. We found that (1) although habitat-severity values closely covaried with elevation in this study, an examined communities along a habitat sev

SUBMITTER: Xu J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5818416 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature