Abstract
Background and aims
Ecotones between coniferous and broadleaved forests in tropical regions are poorly understood. Our aim was to understand community assembly across the ecotones by integrating changes in both plant functional traits and environmental factors.
Methods
The coniferous, ecotone, and broadleaved zones along each of the 15 investigation transects were discerned and surveyed. We measured eight functional traits of 174 woody species and 10 environmental factors along transects across the ecotones. We assessed between-site differences by using ANOVA, and correlations between functional traits and the environmental factors by RDA ordination.
Results
With the variation of vegetation zones from coniferous through the ecotone to broadleaved, the functional traits of plants at the community level changed in accordance with the changes in soil and light regimes. The low soil nutrients and low soil water in the coniferous zone were the major constraints for most lowland rain forest species with acquisitive traits, while high soil nutrients, high soil water and low light in the broadleaved zone had strong filtering effects on the conifer and tropical monsoon rainforest species with conservative traits.
Conclusions
The soil and light conditions were the major determinants for the functional community structure of the vegetation types across the tropical coniferous and broadleaved forest ecotone.
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Abbreviations
- CZ:
-
Coniferous forest zone
- EZ:
-
The ecotone zone
- BZ:
-
Broadleaved forest zone
- SLA:
-
Specific leaf area
- LDMC:
-
Leaf dry matter content
- CC:
-
Leaf total chlorophyll content
- LNC:
-
Leaf nitrogen concentration per mass
- LPC:
-
Leaf phosphorus concentration per mass
- LKC:
-
Leaf potassium concentration per mass
- WD:
-
Wood density
- Hmax :
-
Maximum plant height
- CO:
-
Canopy openness
- SWC:
-
Soil water content
- SOM:
-
Soil organic matter content
- TN:
-
Total nitrogen content
- TP:
-
Total phosphorus content
- TK:
-
Total potassium content
- AN:
-
Available nitrogen content
- AP:
-
Available phosphorus content
- AK:
-
Available potassium content
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the many people who have contributed to this study, especially Mr. Xiusen Yang and Mr. Rucai Li in the Bawangling National Nature Reserve for their assistance of specimen identification and field investigation work. We thank the two anonymous referees for their constructive comments, which have greatly improved the earlier version of this paper. This study was funded by the national forestry research project for public welfare (201304308).
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Zhang, J., Cheng, K., Zang, R. et al. Environmental filtering of species with different functional traits into plant assemblages across a tropical coniferous-broadleaved forest ecotone. Plant Soil 380, 361–374 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-014-2088-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-014-2088-7