Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Contrasting altitudinal variation of alpine plant communities along the Swedish mountains
Stockholm University, Faculty of Science, Department of Zoology.
Stockholm University, Faculty of Science, Department of Zoology.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9737-8242
Stockholm University, Faculty of Science, Department of Physical Geography.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-2656-2645
2020 (English)In: Ecology and Evolution, E-ISSN 2045-7758, Vol. 10, no 11, p. 4838-4853Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Changes in abiotic factors along altitudinal and latitudinal gradients cause powerful environmental gradients. The topography of alpine areas generates environmental gradients over short distances, and alpine areas are expected to experience greater temperature increase compared to the global average. In this study, we investigate alpha, beta, and gamma diversity, as well as community structure, of vascular plant communities along altitudinal gradients at three latitudes in the Swedish mountains. Species richness and evenness decreased with altitude, but the patterns within the altitudinal gradient varied between sites, including a sudden decrease at high altitude, a monotonic decrease, and a unimodal pattern. However, we did not observe a decline in beta diversity with altitude at all sites, and plant communities at all sites were spatially nested according to some other factors than altitude, such as the availability of water or microtopographic position. Moreover, the observed diversity patterns did not follow the latitudinal gradient. We observed a spatial modularity according to altitude, which was consistent across sites. Our results suggest strong influences of site-specific factors on plant community composition and that such factors partly may override effects from altitudinal and latitudinal environmental variation. Spatial variation of the observed vascular plant communities appears to have been caused by a combination of processes at multiple spatial scales.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2020. Vol. 10, no 11, p. 4838-4853
Keywords [en]
altitudinal gradient, community structure, elevation, latitude, mountain ecology, taxonomic diversity
National Category
Biological Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-184607DOI: 10.1002/ece3.6237ISI: 000548039100025PubMedID: 32551065OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-184607DiVA, id: diva2:1462130
Available from: 2020-08-28 Created: 2020-08-28 Last updated: 2024-01-17Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Biodiversity patterns and the processes regulating them along elevation gradients in the Swedish mountains
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Biodiversity patterns and the processes regulating them along elevation gradients in the Swedish mountains
2022 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Biodiversity describes the total variation of life and includes the taxonomic, genetic, and phenotypic differences among organisms. Variations of biodiversity in space and time may be driven by ecological, evolutionary, or neutral processes. The topography in mountains gives rise to substantial gradients in environmental conditions over short geographical distances. This makes them suitable for studies of how environmental conditions influence spatial variation in biodiversity. Additionally, climate change is stronger in high latitude and high elevation environments compared to the global average, which makes mountain environments particularly relevant systems for evaluating the biodiversity consequences of a changing climate. In this thesis I have assumed a declining primary productivity with increasing elevation and tested if this has led to related monotonic declines in biodiversity and a stronger environmental regulation of biodiversity at higher elevations. I pursued the following specific questions; (i) what are the patterns of biodiversity along elevation gradients in the Swedish mountains? (ii) do such patterns vary among organism groups at different trophic levels? (iii) what processes regulate biodiversity along elevation gradients in the Swedish mountains? To address these questions, I quantified patterns of alpha diversity, beta diversity, community composition and community structuring of vascular plants, spiders, insects, and springtails along elevation gradients distributed along the Swedish mountains (Chapter I-III). I also quantified the relative importance of abiotic and biotic environmental conditions for spider diversity (IV), and finally I evaluated if elevational variation in phylogenetic and phenotypic dispersion within vascular plant and spider communities corresponded with an increased environmental regulation at higher elevations (V). Alpha diversity of all organism groups generally declined with elevation. However, while there were geographic differences in these patterns for vascular plants (I-II), there were mainly taxonomic differences in the observed patterns among arthropod groups (III). Taxonomic beta diversity of vascular plants did not show any uniform pattern with elevation but differed both among sites and spatial scales (I-II). The structuring of vascular plant, spider and insect communities were all modular along elevation gradients, but this modularity was less prominent for springtails. Spider and insect communities were also nested along the elevation gradients (III). Vegetation and climate conditions had the largest effects on spider diversity, but the relative effects of different environmental conditions varied both among biodiversity dimensions and spatial scales (IV). Vascular plant and spider communities were both phenotypically and phylogenetically under-dispersed, suggesting that communities were regulated by environmental filtering. However, for vascular plants the phylogenetic dispersion increased while the phenotypic dispersion was constant with elevation, whereas for spiders both phenotypic and phylogenetic dispersion decreased with elevation (V). My results suggest that site-specific and scale-dependent processes may partly override the effects of elevational declines in primary productivity on biodiversity. My results also suggest that biodiversity regulation along gradients can vary among different taxonomic groups and highlight the need to quantify multiple diversity dimensions.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Stockholm: Department of Zoology, Stockholm Univeristy, 2022. p. 29
Keywords
biodiversity, elevation gradients, spiders, insects, plants, latitude, altitude, alpha diversity, beta diversity, taxonomic diversity, phylogenetic diversity, functional diversity
National Category
Zoology
Research subject
Systematic Zoology
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-208057 (URN)978-91-7911-976-8 (ISBN)978-91-7911-977-5 (ISBN)
Public defence
2022-09-30, Vivi Täckholmsalen (Q-salen), NPQ-huset, Svante Arrhenius väg 20, Stockholm, 13:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2022-09-07 Created: 2022-08-17 Last updated: 2022-08-30Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full textPubMed

Authority records

Måsviken, JohannesDalerum, FredrikCousins, Sara A. O.

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Måsviken, JohannesDalerum, FredrikCousins, Sara A. O.
By organisation
Department of ZoologyDepartment of Physical Geography
In the same journal
Ecology and Evolution
Biological Sciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
pubmed
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
pubmed
urn-nbn
Total: 69 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf