Version 1
: Received: 6 April 2018 / Approved: 11 April 2018 / Online: 11 April 2018 (11:24:46 CEST)
How to cite:
Jie, G.; Yanhong, L.; Xue, D.; Bogonovich, M. Habitat is More Important Than Climate and Animal Richness in Shaping Latitudinal Variation in Plant Diversity. Preprints2018, 2018040146. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201804.0146.v1
Jie, G.; Yanhong, L.; Xue, D.; Bogonovich, M. Habitat is More Important Than Climate and Animal Richness in Shaping Latitudinal Variation in Plant Diversity. Preprints 2018, 2018040146. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201804.0146.v1
Jie, G.; Yanhong, L.; Xue, D.; Bogonovich, M. Habitat is More Important Than Climate and Animal Richness in Shaping Latitudinal Variation in Plant Diversity. Preprints2018, 2018040146. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201804.0146.v1
APA Style
Jie, G., Yanhong, L., Xue, D., & Bogonovich, M. (2018). Habitat is More Important Than Climate and Animal Richness in Shaping Latitudinal Variation in Plant Diversity. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201804.0146.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Jie, G., Du Xue and Marc Bogonovich. 2018 "Habitat is More Important Than Climate and Animal Richness in Shaping Latitudinal Variation in Plant Diversity" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201804.0146.v1
Abstract
Species data of 249 National Nature Reserves in China was used to identify potential underlying drivers of latitudinal gradients in plant diversity. We used generalized linear models (GLMs) to assess the correlations between predictor and response variables. We also used SAM (Spatial Analysis in Macroecology) to eliminate autocorrelation along each of the 249 studied locations. We used the Akaike information criterion (AICc; Montoya et al. 2007) to select the independent variables were those included in the best models from different combinations of climate, habitat and animal variables. Variance partitioning was used to decompose the variation in plant richness across different taxonomic levels among the three groups of predictors. We found that: Total plant species, gymnosperms, angiosperms and ferns showed significant latitudinal trends in richness (p < 0.001). Water-energy and habitat variables generally explained more variation in richness across different plant groups than did animal richness. Annual precipitation was selected as the best water-energy variable across different taxonomic plants groups, soil PH and elevation range were selected as the best habitat variables across different taxonomic plant groups. The independent effects of habitatvariables were higher than that of water-energy and animal variables across different taxonomic plants groups. Water-energy, habitat heterogeneity, and animal variables explain 48.8% of the variation in total species richness, 28.2% in gymnosperm richness, 44.2% in angiosperm richness, and 38.9% in fern richness.Plants showed significant latitudinal trends in richness (p < 0.001). Water-energy and habitat variables generally explained more variation in richness across different taxonomic plants groups than did animal variables. The independent effects of habitat variables were higher than those of water-energy and animal variables across different taxonomic plants groups.
Keywords
species richness; latitudinal gradients; water-energy; habitat; animal richness
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
