Beta Diversity Patterns of Post-fire Forests in Central Yunnan Plateau, Southwest China: Disturbances Intensify the Priority Effect in the Community Assembly.

ABSTRACT: Post-fire succession is an ideal case for studying effects of disturbance on community assembly, and the key is to disentangle the contributions of assembly processes to the variation of community composition, namely beta diversity, and the contingent scales. The central Yunnan Plateau of Southwest China is characterized by monsoon related seasonal drought, and frequent forest fires. We sampled five fire sites burned in different years and a middle aged forest, measured species composition dissimilarity and its species turnover and nestedness components, within each fire site and across all sites. Results indicated species turnover as the primary component of beta diversity within all communities. There was no trend of change with year-since-fire (YSF) in beta diversity among early post-fi

SUBMITTER: Han J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6050402 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature