RESUMEN
Host specialization plays a critical role in the ecology and evolution of plant-microbe symbiosis. Theory predicts that host specialization is associated with microbial genome streamlining and is influenced by the abundance of host species, both of which can vary across latitudes, leading to a latitudinal gradient in host specificity. Here, we quantified the host specificity and composition of plant-bacteria symbioses on leaves across 329 tree species spanning a latitudinal gradient. Our analysis revealed a predominance of host-specialized leaf bacteria. The degree of host specificity was negatively correlated with bacterial genome size and the local abundance of host plants. Additionally, we found an increased host specificity at lower latitudes, aligning with the high prevalence of small bacterial genomes and rare host species in the tropics. These findings underscore the importance of genome streamlining and host abundance in the evolution of host specificity in plant-associated bacteria along the latitudinal gradient.
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Tamaño del Genoma , Especificidad del Huésped , Hojas de la Planta , Simbiosis , Hojas de la Planta/microbiología , Bacterias/genética , Bacterias/clasificación , Genoma Bacteriano , Árboles/microbiologíaRESUMEN
For decades, China has implemented restoration programs on a large scale, thanks to its capacity to set policy and mobilize funding resources. An understanding of China's restoration achievements and remaining challenges will help to guide future efforts to restore 30% of its diverse ecosystems under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Here we summarize the major transitions in China's approach to ecosystem restoration since the 1970s, with a focus on the underlying motivations for restoration, approaches to ecosystem management, and financing mechanisms. Whereas China's restoration efforts were predominantly guided by the delivery of certain ecosystem functions and services in earlier decades, more recently it has come to emphasize the restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity. Accordingly, the focal ecosystems, approaches, and financing mechanisms of restoration have also been considerably diversified. This evolution is largely guided by the accumulation of scientific evidence and past experiences. We highlight the key challenges facing China's restoration efforts and propose future directions to improve restoration effectiveness, with regard to goal setting, monitoring, stakeholder involvement, adaptive management, resilience under climate change, and financing.
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Biodiversidad , Cambio Climático , Conservación de los Recursos Naturales , Ecosistema , China , Conservación de los Recursos Naturales/métodos , Restauración y Remediación Ambiental/métodosRESUMEN
The application of DNA barcoding has been significantly limited by the scarcity of reliable specimens and inadequate coverage and replication across all species. The deficiency of DNA barcode reference coverage is particularly striking for highly biodiverse subtropical and tropical regions. In this study, we present a comprehensive barcode library for woody plants in tropical and subtropical China. Our dataset includes a standard barcode library comprising the four most widely used barcodes (rbcL, matK, ITS, and ITS2) for 2,520 species from 4,654 samples across 49 orders, 144 families, and 693 genera, along with 79 samples identified at the genus level. This dataset also provides a super-barcode library consisting of 1,239 samples from 1,139 species, 411 genera, 113 families, and 40 orders. This newly developed library will serve as a valuable resource for DNA barcoding research in tropical and subtropical China and bordering countries, enable more accurate species identification, and contribute to the conservation and management of tropical and subtropical forests.
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Código de Barras del ADN Taxonómico , Plantas , China , Bosques , Filogenia , Plantas/genética , MaderaRESUMEN
Predicting and managing the structure and function of plant microbiomes requires quantitative understanding of community assembly and predictive models of spatial distributions at broad geographic scales. Here, we quantified the relative contribution of abiotic and biotic factors to the assembly of phyllosphere bacterial communities, and developed spatial distribution models for keystone bacterial taxa along a latitudinal gradient, by analyzing 16S rRNA gene sequences from 1453 leaf samples taken from 329 plant species in China. We demonstrated a latitudinal gradient in phyllosphere bacterial diversity and community composition, which was mostly explained by climate and host plant factors. We found that host-related factors were increasingly important in explaining bacterial assembly at higher latitudes while nonhost factors including abiotic environments, spatial proximity and plant neighbors were more important at lower latitudes. We further showed that local plant-bacteria associations were interconnected by hub bacteria taxa to form metacommunity-level networks, and the spatial distribution of these hub taxa was controlled by hosts and spatial factors with varying importance across latitudes. For the first time, we documented a latitude-dependent importance in the driving factors of phyllosphere bacteria assembly and distribution, serving as a baseline for predicting future changes in plant phyllosphere microbiomes under global change and human activities.
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Bacterias , Microbiota , Humanos , ARN Ribosómico 16S/genética , Bacterias/genética , Plantas/genética , Hojas de la Planta/microbiologíaRESUMEN
Global biodiversity decline and its cascading effects through trophic interactions pose a severe threat to human society. Establishing the impacts of biodiversity decline requires a more thorough understanding of multi-trophic interactions and, more specifically, the effects that loss of diversity in primary producers has on multi-trophic community assembly. Within a synthetic conceptual framework for multi-trophic beta-diversity, we tested a series of hypotheses on neutral and niche-based bottom-up processes in assembling herbivore and carnivore communities in a subtropical forest using linear models, hieratical variance partitioning based on linear mixed-effects models (LMMs) and simulation. We found that the observed taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional beta-diversity of both herbivorous caterpillars and carnivorous spiders were significantly and positively related to tree dissimilarity. Linear models and variance partitioning for LMMs jointly suggested that as a result of bottom-up effects, producer dissimilarities were predominant in structuring consumer dissimilarity, the strength of which highly depended on the trophic dependencies on producers, the diversity facet examined, and data quality. Importantly, linear models for standardized beta-diversities against producer dissimilarities implied a transition between niche-based processes such as environmental filtering and competitive exclusion, which supports the role of bottom-up effect in determining consumer community assembly. These findings enrich our mechanistic understanding of the 'Diversity Begets Diversity' hypothesis and the complexity of higher-trophic community assembly, which is fundamental for sustainable biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management.
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Ecosistema , Herbivoria , Humanos , Animales , Filogenia , Biodiversidad , BosquesRESUMEN
An important mechanism promoting species coexistence is conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD), which inhibits conspecific neighbors by accumulating host-specific enemies near adult trees. Natural enemies may be genotype-specific and regulate offspring dynamics more strongly than non-offspring, which is often neglected due to the difficulty in ascertaining genetic relatedness. Here, we investigated whether offspring and non-offspring of a dominant species, Castanopsis eyrei, suffered from different strength of CNDD based on parentage assignment in a subtropical forest. We found decreased recruitment efficiency (proxy of survival probability) of offspring compared with non-offspring near adult trees during the seedling-sapling transition, suggesting genotype-dependent interactions drive tree demographic dynamics. Furthermore, the genetic similarity between individuals of same cohort decreased in late life history stages, indicating genetic-relatedness-dependent tree mortality throughout ontogeny. Our results demonstrate that within-species genetic relatedness significantly affects the strength of CNDD, implying genotype-specific natural enemies may contribute to population dynamics in natural forests.
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Ecosistema , Bosques , Humanos , Dinámica Poblacional , Plantones/genéticaRESUMEN
Tree size shapes forest carbon dynamics and determines how trees interact with their environment, including a changing climate. Here, we conduct the first global analysis of among-site differences in how aboveground biomass stocks and fluxes are distributed with tree size. We analyzed repeat tree censuses from 25 large-scale (4-52 ha) forest plots spanning a broad climatic range over five continents to characterize how aboveground biomass, woody productivity, and woody mortality vary with tree diameter. We examined how the median, dispersion, and skewness of these size-related distributions vary with mean annual temperature and precipitation. In warmer forests, aboveground biomass, woody productivity, and woody mortality were more broadly distributed with respect to tree size. In warmer and wetter forests, aboveground biomass and woody productivity were more right skewed, with a long tail towards large trees. Small trees (1-10 cm diameter) contributed more to productivity and mortality than to biomass, highlighting the importance of including these trees in analyses of forest dynamics. Our findings provide an improved characterization of climate-driven forest differences in the size structure of aboveground biomass and dynamics of that biomass, as well as refined benchmarks for capturing climate influences in vegetation demographic models.
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Carbono , Clima Tropical , Biomasa , Temperatura , MaderaRESUMEN
Phylogenetic trees have been extensively used in community ecology. However, how the phylogeny construction affects ecological inferences is poorly understood. In this study, we constructed three different types of phylogenetic trees (a synthetic-tree generated using V.PhyloMaker, a barcode-tree generated using rbcL+matK+trnH-psbA, and a plastome-tree generated from plastid genomes) that represented an increasing level of phylogenetic resolution among 580 woody plant species from six forest dynamic plots in subtropical evergreen broadleaved forests of China. We then evaluated the performance of each phylogeny in estimations of community phylogenetic structure, turnover and phylogenetic signal in functional traits. As expected, the plastome-tree was most resolved and most supported for relationships among species. For local phylogenetic structure, the three trees showed consistent results with Faith's PD and MPD; however, only the synthetic-tree produced significant clustering patterns using MNTD for some plots. For phylogenetic turnover, contrasting results between the molecular trees and the synthetic-tree occurred only with nearest neighbor distance. The barcode-tree agreed more with the plastome-tree than the synthetic-tree for both phylogenetic structure and turnover. For functional traits, both the barcode-tree and plastome-tree detected phylogenetic signal in maximum height, but only the plastome-tree detected signal in leaf width. This is the first study that uses plastid genomes in large-scale community phylogenetics. Our results highlight the improvement of plastome-trees over barcode-trees and synthetic-trees for the analyses studied here. Our results also point to the possibility of type I and II errors in estimation of phylogenetic structure and turnover and detection of phylogenetic signal when using synthetic-trees.
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Bosques , China , FilogeniaRESUMEN
Biodiversity science in China has seen rapid growth over recent decades, ranging from baseline biodiversity studies to understanding the processes behind evolution across dynamic regions such as the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. We review research, including species catalogues; biodiversity monitoring; the origins, distributions, maintenance and threats to biodiversity; biodiversity-related ecosystem function and services; and species and ecosystems' responses to global change. Next, we identify priority topics and offer suggestions and priorities for future biodiversity research in China. These priorities include (i) the ecology and biogeography of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and surrounding mountains, and that of subtropical and tropical forests across China; (ii) marine and inland aquatic biodiversity; and (iii) effective conservation and management to identify and maintain synergies between biodiversity and socio-economic development to fulfil China's vision for becoming an ecological civilization. In addition, we propose three future strategies: (i) translate advanced biodiversity science into practice for biodiversity conservation; (ii) strengthen capacity building and application of advanced technologies, including high-throughput sequencing, genomics and remote sensing; and (iii) strengthen and expand international collaborations. Based on the recent rapid progress of biodiversity research, China is well positioned to become a global leader in biodiversity research in the near future.
RESUMEN
Measures of ß-diversity are known to be biased by differences in γ-diversity (i.e., γ-dependence), making it challenging to compare ß-diversity across regions. Undersampling corrections have been designed to reduce effects of γ-dependence on ß-diversity arising from the problem of incomplete sampling. However, no study has systematically tested the effectiveness of these corrections or examined how well they reflect ß-diversity patterns across ecological gradients. Here, we conduct these tests by comparing two undersampling corrections with the widely used individual-based null model approach, using both simulated communities along an ecological gradient and empirical data across a wide range of γ-diversity and sample sizes. We found that undersampling corrections using diversity accumulation curves were more effective than the null-model approaches in removing γ-dependence. In particular, the corrected ß-Shannon diversity index was least dependent on γ-diversity, and was the most reflective of the ß-diversity pattern along a simulated ecological gradient. Moreover, a corrected Jaccard-Chao index applied to null model results removed γ-dependence more effectively than either the correction alone or the null model alone. Undersampling corrections are effective tools for removing γ-dependence bias, thus facilitating comparisons of ß-diversity across regions.
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Ecology cannot yet fully explain why so many tree species coexist in natural communities such as tropical forests. A major difficulty is linking individual-level processes to community dynamics. We propose a combination of tree spatial data, spatial statistics and dynamical theory to reveal the relationship between spatial patterns and population-level interaction coefficients and their consequences for multispecies dynamics and coexistence. Here we show that the emerging population-level interaction coefficients have, for a broad range of circumstances, a simpler structure than their individual-level counterparts, which allows for an analytical treatment of equilibrium and stability conditions. Mechanisms such as animal seed dispersal, which result in clustering of recruits that is decoupled from parent locations, lead to a rare-species advantage and coexistence of otherwise neutral competitors. Linking spatial statistics with theories of community dynamics offers new avenues for explaining species coexistence and calls for rethinking community ecology through a spatial lens.
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Ecología , Bosques , Animales , Análisis por Conglomerados , Plantas , ÁrbolesRESUMEN
When Darwin visited the Galapagos archipelago, he observed that, in spite of the islands' physical similarity, members of species that had dispersed to them recently were beginning to diverge from each other. He postulated that these divergences must have resulted primarily from interactions with sets of other species that had also diverged across these otherwise similar islands. By extrapolation, if Darwin is correct, such complex interactions must be driving species divergences across all ecosystems. However, many current general ecological theories that predict observed distributions of species in ecosystems do not take the details of between-species interactions into account. Here we quantify, in sixteen forest diversity plots (FDPs) worldwide, highly significant negative density-dependent (NDD) components of both conspecific and heterospecific between-tree interactions that affect the trees' distributions, growth, recruitment, and mortality. These interactions decline smoothly in significance with increasing physical distance between trees. They also tend to decline in significance with increasing phylogenetic distance between the trees, but each FDP exhibits its own unique pattern of exceptions to this overall decline. Unique patterns of between-species interactions in ecosystems, of the general type that Darwin postulated, are likely to have contributed to the exceptions. We test the power of our null-model method by using a deliberately modified data set, and show that the method easily identifies the modifications. We examine how some of the exceptions, at the Wind River (USA) FDP, reveal new details of a known allelopathic effect of one of the Wind River gymnosperm species. Finally, we explore how similar analyses can be used to investigate details of many types of interactions in these complex ecosystems, and can provide clues to the evolution of these interactions.
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Evolución Biológica , Bosques , Árboles , Análisis por Conglomerados , Fenómenos Ecológicos y Ambientales , Modelos Biológicos , FilogeniaRESUMEN
The decline in species richness at higher latitudes is among the most fundamental patterns in ecology. Whether changes in species composition across space (beta-diversity) contribute to this gradient of overall species richness (gamma-diversity) remains hotly debated. Previous studies that failed to resolve the issue suffered from a well-known tendency for small samples in areas with high gamma-diversity to have inflated measures of beta-diversity. Here, we provide a novel analytical test, using beta-diversity metrics that correct the gamma-diversity and sampling biases, to compare beta-diversity and species packing across a latitudinal gradient in tree species richness of 21 large forest plots along a large environmental gradient in East Asia. We demonstrate that after accounting for topography and correcting the gamma-diversity bias, tropical forests still have higher beta-diversity than temperate analogues. This suggests that beta-diversity contributes to the latitudinal species richness gradient as a component of gamma-diversity. Moreover, both niche specialization and niche marginality (a measure of niche spacing along an environmental gradient) also increase towards the equator, after controlling for the effect of topographical heterogeneity. This supports the joint importance of tighter species packing and larger niche space in tropical forests while also demonstrating the importance of local processes in controlling beta-diversity.
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Biodiversidad , Árboles , Ecología , Asia OrientalRESUMEN
Fungi have a huge biodiversity and play important roles in soil biogeochemical cycling in island ecosystems. Although island biogeography has been widely studied for macroorganisms, fungal community assembly in true islands and its relationship with island area are less documented. We examined soil fungal communities in 18 oceanic islands of two types (eight non-coral islands and 10 coral islands) using the Illumina MiSeq sequencing technique. Our results showed that fungal α-diversity (species richness) was substantially different among the oceanic islands, with a higher value in non-coral islands than in coral islands. Fungal α-diversity was significantly affected by soil potassium and magnesium (Mg) and plant communities in non-coral islands, whereas only soil Mg significantly affected it in coral islands. Soil fungal community composition was significantly different in the non-coral and coral islands and was influenced by soil property, plant community and spatial distance. The ecological stochasticity model showed that the fungal community assembly was mainly governed by deterministic processes regardless of island type. Fungal ß-diversity, but not α-diversity, increased significantly with increasing island area. These findings have implications for the better prediction of soil fungal community dynamics in island systems and biodiversity conservation in fragmented habitats.
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Ecosistema , Suelo , Animales , Biodiversidad , Hongos/genética , Islas , Microbiología del SueloRESUMEN
Foundation species structure forest communities and ecosystems but are difficult to identify without long-term observations or experiments. We used statistical criteria--outliers from size-frequency distributions and scale-dependent negative effects on alpha diversity and positive effects on beta diversity--to identify candidate foundation woody plant species in 12 large forest-dynamics plots spanning 26 degrees of latitude in China. We used these data (1) to identify candidate foundation species in Chinese forests, (2) to test the hypothesis--based on observations of a midlatitude peak in functional trait diversity and high local species richness but few numerically dominant species in tropical forests--that foundation woody plant species are more frequent in temperate than tropical or boreal forests, and (3) to compare these results with data from the Americas to suggest candidate foundation genera in northern hemisphere forests. Using the most stringent criteria, only two species of Acer, the canopy tree Acer ukurunduense and the shrubby treelet Acer barbinerve, were identified in temperate plots as candidate foundation species. Using more relaxed criteria, we identified four times more candidate foundation species in temperate plots (including species of Acer, Pinus, Juglans, Padus, Tilia, Fraxinus, Prunus, Taxus, Ulmus, and Corlyus) than in (sub)tropical plots (the treelets or shrubs Aporosa yunnanensis, Ficus hispida, Brassaiopsis glomerulata, and Orophea laui). Species diversity of co-occurring woody species was negatively associated with basal area of candidate foundation species more frequently at 5- and 10-m spatial grains (scale) than at a 20-m grain. Conversely, Bray-Curtis dissimilarity was positively associated with basal area of candidate foundation species more frequently at 5-m than at 10- or 20-m grains. Both stringent and relaxed criteria supported the hypothesis that foundation species are more common in mid-latitude temperate forests. Comparisons of candidate foundation species in Chinese and North American forests suggest that Acer be investigated further as a foundation tree genus.
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Biodiversidad , Ecosistema , China , Bosques , ÁrbolesRESUMEN
Xiaolong Mountain, located in warm temperate subtropical transition zone, is one of the important biodiversity conservation areas in China. We analyzed species composition, community structure, and habitat preferences of all woody plant species with DBH (diameter at breast height)≥1 cm in a 6 hm2 plot in Xiaolong Mountain, Gansu Province, Northwest China. A total of 29251 individuals (41735 stems) belonging to 33 families, 65 genera, and 124 species were recorded. The 28 species with importance value ≥1 contributed 82.9% to the total abundance. The top four species with the highest importance value were Quercus aliena var. acuteserrata, Betula platyphylla, Lindera aggregata var. playfairii and Corylus heterophylla. The structure of DBH size class of all stems showed an inverse 'J' type, indicating a successful regeneration tendency in the understory. Results from the indicator species analysis showed that 11 species had significant habitat prefe-rences, an two species (Ostrya japonica and Acer stachyophyllum subsp. betulifolium) had the most obvious preferences. Results from the redundancy analysis and partial methods showed that topographic factors played a dominant role in determining species distribution.
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Tracheophyta , Árboles , China , Ecosistema , Bosques , HumanosRESUMEN
Legumes provide an essential service to ecosystems by capturing nitrogen from the atmosphere and delivering it to the soil, where it may then be available to other plants. However, this facilitation by legumes has not been widely studied in global tropical forests. Demographic data from 11 large forest plots (16-60 ha) ranging from 5.25° S to 29.25° N latitude show that within forests, leguminous trees have a larger effect on neighbor diversity than non-legumes. Where soil nitrogen is high, most legume species have higher neighbor diversity than non-legumes. Where soil nitrogen is low, most legumes have lower neighbor diversity than non-legumes. No facilitation effect on neighbor basal area was observed in either high or low soil N conditions. The legume-soil nitrogen positive feedback that promotes tree diversity has both theoretical implications for understanding species coexistence in diverse forests, and practical implications for the utilization of legumes in forest restoration.
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Nitrógeno , Suelo/química , Árboles , Biodiversidad , Fabaceae , Bosques , Nitrógeno/análisis , Fijación del Nitrógeno , Clima TropicalRESUMEN
Flagship species have been used widely as umbrella species (i.e., species with large home range whose protection often provides protection for sympatric species) in the management of China's nature reserves. This conflation of flagship and umbrella species is best represented by the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) and other large, endangered mammals designated as conservation targets in site selection and planning of reserves. Few empirical studies have tested the effectiveness of flagship species as surrogates for a broader range of sympatric species. Using extensive camera-trap data, we examined the effectiveness of management zones designated to protect flagship (target) species in conserving sympatric species in 4 wildlife reserves (Gutianshan, Changqing, Laohegou, and Wolong). We tested whether the progression from peripheral to core zones was associated with an increasing habitat association for both target and sympatric species. The distribution patterns of the study species across the zones in each reserve indicated a disparity between management zones and the species' habitat requirements. Management zone was included in the final model for all target species, and most of them had higher occurrence in core zones relative to less-protected zones, but zone was not a predictor for most of the sympatric species. When management zone was associated with the occurrence of sympatric species, threatened species generally had higher detections in core zones, whereas common species had higher detections outside of the core zone. Our results suggested that reserve planning based on flagship species does not adequately protect sympatric species due to their specialized habitat requirements. We recommend re-examining the effectiveness of management zoning and urge a multispecies and reserve-wide monitoring plan to improve protection of China's wildlife.
Efectividad del Manejo de Zonación Diseñada para Especies Bandera en la Protección de Especies Simpátricas Resumen Las especies bandera se han utilizado ampliamente como especies paraguas (es decir, especies con una extensa distribución cuya protección frecuentemente proporciona protección para especies simpátricas) en el manejo de las reservas naturales de China. Esta combinación de especie bandera y especie paraguas tiene su mejor representación en el panda gigante (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) y otros grandes mamíferos en peligro de extinción designados como objetivos de conservación en la selección de sitio y la planeación de reservas. Pocos estudios empíricos han probado la efectividad de las especies bandera como sustitutas de una especie simpátrica con una distribución más amplia. Con datos numerosos de cámaras trampa, examinamos la efectividad de las zonas de manejo designadas para proteger a las especies bandera (objetivo) en la conservación de especies simpátricas dentro de cuatro reservas de fauna (Gutianshan, Changqing, Laohegou y Wolong). Probamos si la progresión de las zonas periféricas hacia las zonas núcleo estaba relacionada con asociaciones crecientes de hábitat tanto para las especies objetivo como para las simpátricas. Los patrones de distribución del estudio de especies a lo largo de las zonas en cada reserva indicaron una disparidad entre las zonas de manejo y los requerimientos de hábitat de las especies. La zona de manejo se incluyó dentro del modelo final para todas las especies objetivo y la mayoría de ellas tuvo una presencia más alta en las zonas núcleo en relación con las zonas de menor protección. Cuando la zona de manejo se asoció a la presencia de especies simpátricas, las especies amenazadas generalmente tuvieron un mayor número de detecciones en la zona núcleo, mientras que las especies comunes tuvieron un número más elevado de detecciones fuera de la zona núcleo. Nuestros resultados sugieren que la planeación de reservas basada en las especies bandera no protege adecuadamente a las especies simpátricas debido a sus requerimientos especializados de hábitat. Recomendamos una reexaminación de la efectividad del manejo de zonación y urgimos que se genere un plan de monitoreo multiespecífico en toda la reserva para mejorar la protección de la fauna en China.
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Conservación de los Recursos Naturales , Simpatría , Animales , China , Ecosistema , Especies en Peligro de ExtinciónRESUMEN
Stem xylem-specific hydraulic conductivity (KS ) represents the potential for plant water transport normalized by xylem cross section, length, and driving force. Variation in KS has implications for plant transpiration and photosynthesis, growth and survival, and also the geographic distribution of species. Clarifying the global-scale patterns of KS and its major drivers is needed to achieve a better understanding of how plants adapt to different environmental conditions, particularly under climate change scenarios. Here, we compiled a xylem hydraulics dataset with 1,186 species-at-site combinations (975 woody species representing 146 families, from 199 sites worldwide), and investigated how KS varied with climatic variables, plant functional types, and biomes. Growing-season temperature and growing-season precipitation drove global variation in KS independently. Both the mean and the variation in KS were highest in the warm and wet tropical regions, and lower in cold and dry regions, such as tundra and desert biomes. Our results suggest that future warming and redistribution of seasonal precipitation may have a significant impact on species functional diversity, and is likely to be particularly important in regions becoming warmer or drier, such as high latitudes. This highlights an important role for KS in predicting shifts in community composition in the face of climate change.