Spatial patterns and associations of dominant species in a subtropical mid-mountain moist evergreen broadleaf forest in Gaoligong Mountains,Southwest China
Aims The spatial distributions and associations of tree species offer valuable insights into interspecies relationships and their interplay with the surrounding environment.These insights are critical for understanding community assembly and species coexistence.Methods To investigate the spatial distribution patterns of the tree species in the mid-mountain moist evergreen broadleaf forest in the south of Gaoligong Mountains,the spatial distributions and interspecies associations of ten dominant species were analyzed by using the point pattern analyses for all woody plants with diameter at breast height≥1 cm in a 4 hm2 plot.Important findings Our results showed:(1)All ten dominant species and the overall tree population exhibited a J-shaped diameter class distribution,indicating growing populations with successful recruitment.(2)Under the complete spatial randomness with univariate pairwise correlation functions,the small-scale patterns of species distribution were aggregated.This aggregation weakened with increasing scale,resulting in random and uniform distribution at larger scales.After accounting for environmental heterogeneity,the range of aggregation was reduced,while the range of random and uniform distribution expanded.(3)Bivariate pairwise correlation function tests under complete spatial randomness null model demonstrated that interspecies correlations were dominated by significant positive associations,while become no significant association under heterogeneous Poisson null model.In conclusion,the distribution patterns and correlations of ten dominant species in Gaoligong Mountains varied with spatial scale,further emphasizing the strong scale-dependency of species distributions.This suggests that forests in Gaoligong Mountains were influenced by several factors,such as dispersal limitation,negative density dependence,and habitat heterogeneity.
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