Variant responses of tree seedling to seasonal drought stress along an elevational transect in tropical montane forests
Seasonal drought is a common phenomenon in many forests predominated by monsoon climate. The impact of seasonal drought, however, may vary with elevations, and tree species of forests hence may differ in their response to elevations. In this study, we monitored the seasonal variation of seedling spe...
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| Format: | Online |
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Nature Publishing Group
2016
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5098249/ |
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pubmed-50982492016-11-10 Variant responses of tree seedling to seasonal drought stress along an elevational transect in tropical montane forests Song, Xiaoyang Li, Jieqiong Zhang, Wenfu Tang, Yong Sun, Zhenhua Cao, Min Article Seasonal drought is a common phenomenon in many forests predominated by monsoon climate. The impact of seasonal drought, however, may vary with elevations, and tree species of forests hence may differ in their response to elevations. In this study, we monitored the seasonal variation of seedling species composition, and their relative growth rate (RGR) along an elevational transect in tropical forests of southwest China for two years. We found tree seedling species richness declined with rising elevation. Seedling abundance and species richness increased significantly from dry season to rainy season. In dry season, RGR declined progressively from low to high elevational bands, while positive RGR occurred in each elevation in rainy season. We grouped seedling species into low and high elevation specialists based on their elevational distributions. Seasonal variance in soil moisture may lead to seasonal dynamics of seedling community in this area. Our results suggest that the observed change in local climate over the last 40 years tends to allow the tree species from high elevation to expand their distribution to the lower elevation, while the ranges of those at low elevations could be compressed or at the risk of extinction. Nature Publishing Group 2016-11-07 /pmc/articles/PMC5098249/ /pubmed/27819274 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep36438 Text en Copyright © 2016, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Song, Xiaoyang Li, Jieqiong Zhang, Wenfu Tang, Yong Sun, Zhenhua Cao, Min |
| spellingShingle |
Song, Xiaoyang Li, Jieqiong Zhang, Wenfu Tang, Yong Sun, Zhenhua Cao, Min Variant responses of tree seedling to seasonal drought stress along an elevational transect in tropical montane forests |
| author_facet |
Song, Xiaoyang Li, Jieqiong Zhang, Wenfu Tang, Yong Sun, Zhenhua Cao, Min |
| author_sort |
Song, Xiaoyang |
| title |
Variant responses of tree seedling to seasonal drought stress along an elevational transect in tropical montane forests |
| title_short |
Variant responses of tree seedling to seasonal drought stress along an elevational transect in tropical montane forests |
| title_full |
Variant responses of tree seedling to seasonal drought stress along an elevational transect in tropical montane forests |
| title_fullStr |
Variant responses of tree seedling to seasonal drought stress along an elevational transect in tropical montane forests |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Variant responses of tree seedling to seasonal drought stress along an elevational transect in tropical montane forests |
| title_sort |
variant responses of tree seedling to seasonal drought stress along an elevational transect in tropical montane forests |
| description |
Seasonal drought is a common phenomenon in many forests predominated by monsoon climate. The impact of seasonal drought, however, may vary with elevations, and tree species of forests hence may differ in their response to elevations. In this study, we monitored the seasonal variation of seedling species composition, and their relative growth rate (RGR) along an elevational transect in tropical forests of southwest China for two years. We found tree seedling species richness declined with rising elevation. Seedling abundance and species richness increased significantly from dry season to rainy season. In dry season, RGR declined progressively from low to high elevational bands, while positive RGR occurred in each elevation in rainy season. We grouped seedling species into low and high elevation specialists based on their elevational distributions. Seasonal variance in soil moisture may lead to seasonal dynamics of seedling community in this area. Our results suggest that the observed change in local climate over the last 40 years tends to allow the tree species from high elevation to expand their distribution to the lower elevation, while the ranges of those at low elevations could be compressed or at the risk of extinction. |
| publisher |
Nature Publishing Group |
| publishDate |
2016 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5098249/ |
| _version_ |
1613715803248525312 |