The researchers from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences explored the relative contributions of deterministic processes including niche-based environmental filtering and competition and stochastic (neutral) processes including dispersal limitation and ecological drift to driving taxonomic and functional beta diversity of passerine bird assemblages of Yunnan Province at county level.
Previous studies have shown that bird assemblages have taxonomic and functional beta diversity that is dependent on different processes at different spatial and temporal scales. However, few studies have investigated that diversity of bird assemblages in regional scale to date.
In this study, the researchers described the taxonomic and functional beta diversity of passerine birds across Yunnan Province at county level.
They constructed a null distribution for each pair of assemblages to test the functional dissimilarity which may be higher or lower than random expectation given the observed species beta diversity.
They found that the taxonomic and functional similarity decayed significantly along geographic distance, with passerine bird assemblages located in the northwest and southwest of the province having higher functional beta diversity values than expected.
Moreover, by using multiple regressions on distance matrices, the researchers assessed spatial and environmental explanations. They found that environmental distance and geographic distance explained a similar amount of taxonomic beta diversity, but environmental distance explained much more functional beta diversity.
The findings were published in Ecosphere. The study suggests that both deterministic and stochastic processes drive taxonomic beta diversity, whereas deterministic processes, particularly environmental filtering, play a dominant role in driving functional beta diversity of passerine bird assemblages at cross-county scale.
Using detailed distribution data for woody plant species in China, researchers from the Wuhan Botanical Garden and Peking University have quantitatively evaluated spatial patterns in diversity in Wuling Mountains and the adjacent regions to provide an overview of inter-re...
In a study published in Limnology and Oceanography, the research group led by Prof. XIE Zhicai from the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed that different dimensions of beta diversity were determined by distinct ecological proces...
86-10-68597521 (day)
86-10-68597289 (night)
86-10-68511095 (day)
86-10-68512458 (night)
cas_en@cas.cn
52 Sanlihe Rd., Xicheng District,
Beijing, China (100864)
Copyright © 2002 - Chinese Academy of Sciences
