Understory Community Assembly Following Wildfire in Boreal Forests: Shift From Stochasticity to Competitive Exclusion and Environmental Filtering.

ABSTRACT: Understory vegetation accounts for the majority of plant species diversity and serves as a driver of overstory succession and nutrient cycling in boreal forest ecosystems. However, investigations of the underlying assembly processes of understory vegetation associated with stand development following a wildfire disturbance are rare, particularly in Eurasian boreal forests. In this study, we measured the phylogenetic and functional diversity and trait dispersions of understory communities and tested how these patterns changed with stand age in the Great Xing'an Mountains of Northeastern China. Contrary to our expectation, we found that understory functional traits were phylogenetically convergent. We found that random patterns of phylogenetic, functional, and trait dispersions were dominant

SUBMITTER: Liu B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6315132 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature