Plant diversity changes and succession along resource availability and disturbance gradients in Kamchatka
Changes in plant species richness across environmental and temporal gradients have often been explained by the intermediate disturbance hypothesis and a unimodal diversity-productivity relationship. We tested these predictions using two sets of mountain plant communities assembled along postglacial...
| Published in: | Plant Ecology |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-013-0184-z http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0225396 |
| Summary: | Changes in plant species richness across environmental and temporal gradients have often been explained by the intermediate disturbance hypothesis and a unimodal diversity-productivity relationship. We tested these predictions using two sets of mountain plant communities assembled along postglacial successional and snow depth (disturbance and stress) gradients in maritime Kamchatka. In each community, we counted the number of species in plots of increasing sizes (0.0025-100 m(2)) and analyzed them using species-area curves fitted by the Arrhenius power function and the Gleason logarithmic function. A comparison of successional communities along a 270-year-old moraine chronosequence behind the receding Koryto Glacier-representing gradients of increasing productivity and resource competition-confirmed the unimodal species richness pattern. A comparative study of major mountain plant communities distributed above the Koryto Glacier foreland did not confirm the highest species richness at intermediate levels of disturbance and stress. |
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