Department of Botany, Hazara University, Mansehra, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
William L. Brown Center, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 Feb 24;17(2):e0260687. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260687. eCollection 2022.
By assessing plant species composition and distribution in biodiversity hotspots influenced by environmental gradients, we greatly advance our understanding of the local plant community and how environmental factors are affecting these communities. This is a proxy for determining how climate change influences plant communities in mountainous regions ("space-for-time" substitution). We evaluated plant species composition and distribution, and how and which environmental variables drive the plant communities in moist temperate zone of Manoor valley of Northwestern Himalaya, Pakistan. During four consecutive years (2015-2018), we sampled 30 sampling sites, measuring 21 environmental variables, and recording all plant species present in an altitudinal variable range of 1932-3168 m.a.s.l. We used different multivariate analyses to identify potential plant communities, and to evaluate the relative importance of each environmental variable in the species composition and distribution. Finally, we also evaluated diversity patterns, by comparing diversity indices and beta diversity processes. We found that (i) the moist temperate zone in this region can be divided in four different major plant communities; (ii) each plant community has a specific set of environmental drivers; (iii) there is a significant variation in plant species composition between communities, in which six species contributed most to the plant composition dissimilarity; (iv) there is a significant difference of the four diversity indices between communities; and (v) community structure is twice more influenced by the spatial turnover of species than by the species loss. Overall, we showed that altitudinal gradients offer an important range of different environmental variables, highlighting the existence of micro-climates that drive the structure and composition of plant species in each micro-region. Each plant community along the altitudinal gradient is influenced by a set of environmental variables, which lead to the presence of indicator species in each micro-region.
通过评估受环境梯度影响的生物多样性热点中的植物物种组成和分布，我们极大地提高了对当地植物群落的理解，以及环境因素如何影响这些群落。这是确定气候变化如何影响山区植物群落的一种替代方法（“空间替代时间”）。我们评估了植物物种组成和分布，以及环境变量如何以及哪些环境变量驱动巴基斯坦西北喜马拉雅山脉曼努尔山谷湿润温带地区的植物群落。在连续四年（2015-2018 年）中，我们在海拔 1932-3168 米的范围内采样了 30 个采样点，测量了 21 个环境变量，并记录了所有存在的植物物种。我们使用不同的多元分析方法来确定潜在的植物群落，并评估每个环境变量在物种组成和分布中的相对重要性。最后，我们还通过比较多样性指数和 beta 多样性过程来评估多样性模式。我们发现：（i）该地区的湿润温带可以分为四个不同的主要植物群落；（ii）每个植物群落都有特定的一套环境驱动因素；（iii）群落之间的植物物种组成存在显著差异，其中六种物种对植物组成的差异贡献最大；（iv）四个多样性指数在群落之间存在显著差异；（v）群落结构受物种空间周转率的影响是物种损失的两倍。总体而言，我们表明海拔梯度提供了一系列重要的不同环境变量，突出了微气候的存在，这些微气候驱动着每个微区域的植物物种结构和组成。沿海拔梯度的每个植物群落都受到一组环境变量的影响，这些变量导致每个微区域存在指示物种。
