青藏高原东缘处于演替阶段的物种多样性模式、物种多度和空间分布.docVIP

  Species diversity patterns, species abundances and spatial distribution along a succession gradient in the eastern  5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 Qinghai-Tibetan plateau# Yang Jie, Zhang Hui** (State Key Laboratory of Grassland Farming Systems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, LanZhou 730000) Abstract: Currently there are three major kinds of ideas about the interrelationships among area, species richness, species abundance, and the spatial distribution. The first is the widely accepted generalization that the number of species increases with area. Others characterize species diversity based on species dominance or species aggregation patterns. However, the relationships among these three patterns remain unclear. We evaluate these three patterns in relation to understanding species richness of meadow plant communities along a successional gradient in the eastern Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. We examined the three SAR (species-area relationship) models using a chronosequence of sub-alpine meadows in Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau that range from ‘old growth’ (never farmed [control]), to those that have been protected from agricultural exploitation for 1 to 7 years. We aim to test the relationships between species dominance and species spatial distributions in a community on one hand and SARs on the other. We exploit the changing species dominance and species aggregation patterns along the chronosequence of successional plant communities to compare theoretical predictions with the observed patterns. We found that species dominance and aggregation models can all produce SARs similar to ones from real communities along the successional gradient. However, species spatial aggregation patterns suggested by these models are all quite different from the observed ones. These results demonstrate the limited ability of SARs in inferring species-aggregation relationships in a given area, and vice versa. More reasonable species-aggregation models accounting for heterogeneity o