TY - JOUR

T1 - Community assembly during secondary forest succession in a Chinese subtropical forest

AU - Bruelheide, Helge

AU - Böhnke, Martin

AU - Both, Sabine

AU - Fang, Teng

AU - Aßmann, Thorsten

AU - Baruffol, Martin

AU - Bauhus, Jürgen

AU - Buscot, Francois

AU - Chen, Xiao-Yong

AU - Ding, Bing-Yang

AU - Durka, Walter

AU - Erfmeier, Alexandra

AU - Fischer, Markus

AU - Geißler, Christian

AU - Guo, Dali

AU - Guo, Liang-Dong

AU - Härdtle, Werner

AU - He, Jin-Sheng

AU - Hector, Andy

AU - Kröber, Wenzel

AU - Kühn, Peter

AU - Lang, Anne C.

AU - Nadrowski, Karin

AU - Pei, Kequan

AU - Scherer-Lorenzen, Michael

AU - Shi, Xuezheng

AU - Scholten, Thomas

AU - Schuldt, Andreas

AU - Trogisch, Stefan

AU - Oheimb, Goddert

AU - Welk, Erik

AU - Wirth, Christian

AU - Wu, Yu-Ting

AU - Yang, Xuefei

AU - Zeng, Xueqin

AU - Zhang, Shouren

AU - Zhou, Hongzhang

AU - Ma, Keping

AU - Schmid, Bernhard

PY - 2011/2

Y1 - 2011/2

N2 - Subtropical broad-leaved forests in southeastern China support a high diversity of woody plants. Using a comparative study design with 30×30 m plots (n1/427) from five successional stages (<20, <40, <60, <80,≤80 yr), we investigated how the gradient in species composition reflects underlying processes of community assembly. In particular, we tested whether species richness of adult trees and shrubs decreased or increased and assessed to which degree this pattern was caused by negative density dependence or continuous immigration over time. Furthermore, we tested whether rare species were increasingly enriched and the species composition of adult trees and shrubs became more similar to species composition of seedlings during the course of succession. We counted the individuals of all adult species and shrubs >1 m in height in each plot and counted all woody recruits (bank of all seedlings ≤1 m in height) in each central 10×10 m quadrant of each plot. In addition, we measured a number of environmental variables (elevation, slope, aspect, soil moisture, pH, C, N, and C/N ratio) and biotic structural variables (height and cover of layers). Adult species richness varied from 25 to 69 species per plot, and in total 148 woody species from 46 families were recorded. There was a clear successional gradient in species composition as revealed by nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS), but only a poor differentiation of different successional stages with respect to particular species. Adult richness per 100 individuals (rarefaction method) increased with successional stage. None of the measured abiotic variables were significantly correlated with adult species richness. We found no evidence that rare species were responsible for the increasing adult species richness, as richness of rare species among both adults and recruits was independent of the successional stage. Furthermore, the similarity between established adults and recruits did not increase with successional stage. There was a constant number of recruit species and also of exclusive recruit species, i.e., those that had not been present as adult individuals, across all successional stages, suggesting a continuous random immigration over time.

AB - Subtropical broad-leaved forests in southeastern China support a high diversity of woody plants. Using a comparative study design with 30×30 m plots (n1/427) from five successional stages (<20, <40, <60, <80,≤80 yr), we investigated how the gradient in species composition reflects underlying processes of community assembly. In particular, we tested whether species richness of adult trees and shrubs decreased or increased and assessed to which degree this pattern was caused by negative density dependence or continuous immigration over time. Furthermore, we tested whether rare species were increasingly enriched and the species composition of adult trees and shrubs became more similar to species composition of seedlings during the course of succession. We counted the individuals of all adult species and shrubs >1 m in height in each plot and counted all woody recruits (bank of all seedlings ≤1 m in height) in each central 10×10 m quadrant of each plot. In addition, we measured a number of environmental variables (elevation, slope, aspect, soil moisture, pH, C, N, and C/N ratio) and biotic structural variables (height and cover of layers). Adult species richness varied from 25 to 69 species per plot, and in total 148 woody species from 46 families were recorded. There was a clear successional gradient in species composition as revealed by nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS), but only a poor differentiation of different successional stages with respect to particular species. Adult richness per 100 individuals (rarefaction method) increased with successional stage. None of the measured abiotic variables were significantly correlated with adult species richness. We found no evidence that rare species were responsible for the increasing adult species richness, as richness of rare species among both adults and recruits was independent of the successional stage. Furthermore, the similarity between established adults and recruits did not increase with successional stage. There was a constant number of recruit species and also of exclusive recruit species, i.e., those that had not been present as adult individuals, across all successional stages, suggesting a continuous random immigration over time.

KW - Biology

KW - BEF-China

KW - China

KW - Chronosequence

KW - Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA)

KW - Gutianshan National Nature Reserve

KW - Immigration

KW - Negative density dependence

KW - Nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS)

KW - Permanent forest dynamic plots

KW - Random assembly

KW - Secondary forest succession

KW - Zhejiang Province

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=78649976187&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1890/09-2172.1

DO - 10.1890/09-2172.1

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 81

SP - 25

EP - 41

JO - Ecological Monographs

JF - Ecological Monographs

SN - 0012-9615

IS - 1

ER -