home icon user icon
Welcome to International Network for Natural Sciences | INNS Pub.
Home My Account
Submit Manuscript
double_slash
breadcumb_bg

Neutral theory and the functional diversity in the semiarid area of District Karak, Pakistan

Paper Details

Research Paper 01/05/2019
Views (381) Download (10)
current_issue_feature_image
publication_file

Neutral theory and the functional diversity in the semiarid area of District Karak, Pakistan

Zulqarnain, Ayaz Malook, Zain Ullah, Rehman Ullah, Laiq Zaman, Asghar Ali
J. Bio. Env. Sci.14( 5), 31-36, May 2019.
Certificate: JBES 2019 [Generate Certificate]
Key: Abiotic microenvironmentEnvironmental filterPhenotypic diversityRecruitment limitationTaxonomic diversity

Abstract

Environmental gradients and human perturbations greatly involved in community assembly, stability and dynamics of habitat and the exploration of functional diversity support in an understanding communities and ecosystems. Present study is based on trait-based approach to know how species assemble in a random and non-random ways and what is the role of stochastic (random) and deterministic (nonrandom) processes in community assembly of species. This study aimed at advancing understanding about the functional diversity of the area to assess the plant species community assembly of District Karak. Twelve plots of 100 m × 100m, were randomly placed in five different monitoring sites of District Karak. Species were sampled by applying DBH method (Diameter at Breast Height) ≥ 1 cm. In addition to this leaf size and wood density were also calculated. The use of such characters depicts stability of the species in the habitat. CWMs (Community Weighted Mean) were used because these are measurements that account for trait values as well as abundance. Less variation was found among the traits in the species of all the communities. A non-random pattern of traits was recorded in the study area. Results suggest that limiting functional traits are the result of environmental factors prevailing in the area and non-random occurrence may the result of dispersal limitations of the species in the area.

VIEWS 15
Cover PDF

Bengtsson J. 1998. Which species? What kind of diversity? Which ecosystem function? Some problems in studies of relations between biodiversity and ecosystem function. Appl. Soil Ecol 10, 191-199.

Chapin FS, Zavelata ES, Eviner VT, Naylor RL, Vitousek PM, Reynolds HL. 2000. Consequences of changing biodiversity. Nature 405, 234-242.

Chave J, Coomes D, Jansen S, Lewis L, Swenson NG, Zanne AE. 2009. Towards a worldwide wood economics spectrum. Ecology Letters 12, 351-366.

Cornelissen JHC, Lavorel S, Garnier E, Díaz S, Buchmann N, Gurvich DE, Reich PB, Ter Steeg H, Morgan HD, Van Der Heijden MGA, Pausas JG, Poorter H. 2003. A Handbook of Protocols for Standardised and Easy Measurement of Plant Functional Traits Worldwide. Australian Journal of Botany 51, 335-380.

Diaz S, Cabido M, Casanoves F. 1998. Plant functional traits and environmental filters at a regional scale. Journal of vegetation science. Feb 1; 9(1), 113-22.

Díaz S, Cabido M, Zak M, Martínez Carretero E, Araníbar J. 1999. Plant functional traits, ecosystem structure and land‐use history along a climatic gradient in central‐western Argentina. Journal of Vegetation Science. Oct 1; 10(5), 651-60.

Grime JP. 2001. Plant Strategies, Vegetation Processes and Ecosystem Properties. John Wiley and Sons, Inc, New York, NY.

Hooper DU, Chapin FS, Ewel JJ, Hector A, Inchausti P, Lavorel S et al. 2005. Effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning: a consensus of current knowledge. Ecol. Monogr 75, 3-35.

Hubbell SP, Foster RB. 1986b. Biology, chance and history and the structure of tropical rain forest tree communities. pp: 314-329 in JM Diamond and TJ Case, eds. Community Ecology. Harper and Row, New York (Chaps. 4, 10).

Hubbell SP. 2001. The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Hubbell SP. 2005. Neutral theory and the evolution of functional equivalence. Ecology in press.

Hurtt GC, Pacala SW. 1995. The consequences of recruitment limitation. Reconciling chance, history, and competitive differences between plants. Journal of Theoretical Biology 176, 1-12.

Keddy PA. 1992. Assembly and response rules: two goals for predictive community ecology. Journal of Vegetation Science. Apr 1; 3(2), 157-64.

Kraft NJB, Valencia R, Ackerly DD. 2008. Functional Traits and Niche based Tree Community Assembly in an Amazonian Forest. Science 322, 580-582.

Loreau M, Naeem S, Inchausti P, Bengtsson J, Grime JP, Hector A. 2001. Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: current knowledge and future challenges. Science 294, 804-808.

Loreau M, Naeem S, Inchausti P. 2002. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning. Synthesis and Perspectives. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Martinez ND. 1996. Defining and measuring functional attributes of biodiversity. In: Biodiversity. A Biology of Numbers and Difference (ed. Gaston, KJ). Blackwell Science Ltd. Oxford pp: 114-148.

McGill BJ, Enquist BJ, Weiher E, Westoby M. 2006. Rebuilding Community Ecology from Functional Traits. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 21, 178-185.

Pausas JG, Carreras J, Ferré A, Font X. 2003. Coarse-scale plant species richness in relation to environmental heterogeneity. Journal of Vegetation Science 14(5), 661-668.

Peters O, Zanne AE. 2011. Wood density protocol. Prometheus Wiki. http://prometheuswiki.publish. csiro.au/tiki.index.php?page=Wood+density+protocol>

Reich PB, Knops J, Tilman D, Craine J, Ellsworth DS, Tjoelker M. 2001. Plant diversity enhances ecosystem responses to elevated CO2 and nitrogen deposition. Nature 410, 809-812.

Schmid B, Hector A, Huston MA, Inchausti P, Nijs I, Leadley PW et al. 2002. The design and analysis of biodiversity experiments. In Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning. Synthesis and Perspectives (eds Loreau, M, Naeem, S, Inchausti, P). Oxford University Press, Oxford pp: 61-75.

Schneider CA, Rasband WS, Eliceiri KW. 2012. NIH Image to Image J. 25 years of image analysis. Nature Methods 9, 671-675. Seed Information Database. Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. http://data.kew.org/sid/sidsearch.html

Stevens RD, Cox SB, Strauss RE, Willig MR. 2003. Patterns of functional diversity across an extensive environmental gradient: vertebrate consumers, hidden treatments and latitudinal trends. Ecology Lett 6, 1099-1108.

Swenson NG. 2011. The role of evolutionary processes in producing biodiversity patterns, and the interrelationships between taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic biodiversity. American Journal of Botany 98, 472-480.

Swenson NG. 2012. The Functional Ecology and Diversity of Tropical Tree Assemblages Through Space and Time: From Local to Regional and from Traits to Transcriptomes. ISRN Forestry 2012: 1-16.

Thuiller W, Midgley GF, Rouget M, Cowling R. 2006. Predicting patterns of plant species richness in megadiverse South Africa. Ecography 29(5), 733-744.

Tilman D, Reich PB, Knops J, Wedin D, Mielke T, Lehman CL. 2001. Diversity and productivity in a long-term grassland experiment. Science 294, 843-845.

Tilman D. 1999. The ecological consequences of changes biodiversity, a search for general principles. Ecology 80, 1455-1474.

Verdú M, Valiente-Banuet A. 2008. The nested assembly of plant facilitation networks prevents species extinctions. American Naturalist 172(6), 751-760.

Weiher E, Clarke GDP, Keddy PA. 1998. Community assembly rules, morphological dispersion, and the coexistence of plant species. Oikos 81, 309-322.

Wright IJ, Reich PB, Westoby M, Ackerly DD, Baruch Z, Bongers F. 2004. The worldwide leaf economics spectrum. Nature 428, 821-827.

Zimmerman JK, Everham III EM, Waide RB, Lodge DJ, Taylor CM, Brokaw NVL. 1994. Responses of tree species to hurricane winds in subtropical wet forest in Puerto Rico: implications for tropical tree life histories. Journal of Ecology 82, 911-922.

Submit Manuscript