Funding information
National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant/Award Number:
31901136
Abstract: We sought to assess effect of plant environmental
adaptation strategies and evolutionary history and quantify the
contribution of ecological processes to community assembly by measuring
functional traits and phylogenetic composition in local forest
community. We selected 18 dominant tree species in a Lithocarpus
glaber–Cyclobalanopsis glauca evergreen broad-leaved forest and
measured nine leaf functional traits and phylogenetic data of each
species. We analyzed the variation in traits and trade-off
relationships, tested phylogenetic effects on leaf functional traits,
explored the influence of phylogeny and environment on leaf functional
traits, and distinguished the relative effects of spatial and
environmental variables on functional traits and phylogenetic
compositions. The results showed the following: (i) Leaf traits had
moderate intraspecific variation, and significant interspecific
variation existed especially among life forms. (ii) Significant
phylogenetic signals were detected only in leaf thickness and leaf area.
The correlations among traits both supported “the leaf economics
spectrum” at the species and community levels, and the relationships
significantly increased or only a little change after removing the
influence of phylogeny, which showed a lack of consistency between the
leaf functional trait patterns and phylogenetic patterns. We infer the
coexistent species tended to adopt “realism” to adapt to their
habitats. (iii) Soil total potassium and phosphorus content, altitude,
aspect, and convexity were the most critical environmental factors
affecting functional traits and phylogenetic composition. Total
environmental and spatial variables explained 63.38% of the variation
in functional trait composition and 47.96% of the variation in
phylogenetic structures. Meanwhile, the contribution of pure spatial
factors was significantly higher than that of the pure environment.Neutral- theory-based stochastic processes played dominant roles
in driving community functional trait assembly, butniche-theory-based determinative processes such as environmental
filtering had a stronger effect on shaping community phylogenetic
structure at a fine scale.
Key words: community assembly, environmental and spatial
variables, leaf functional traits, phylogeny, subtropical evergreen
broad-leaved forest