GENETIC RELATIONSHIP AMONG NINE RHODODENDRON SPECIES IN QINLING MOUNTAINS, CHINA USING AMPLIFIED FRAGMENT LENGTH POLYMORPHISM MARKERS

摘要

Many trait-based plant investigations have neglected the intraspecific trait variations. A lot of ecologists consider thatthis is unreasonable, because intraspecific variation significantly affects various ecological dynamics. However, it is notfeasible to record the traits of each plant individually at every community site. Therefore, the aim of this study was todetermine in which circumstances it is most important to account for intraspecific trait variations. We conducted analysesusing a trait-based niche–neutral continuum model integrating inter- and intraspecific variance. Then we tested the modelthrough three popular community pattern indexes generated from four kinds of community assembly processes. The resultsshowed that it was more important to consider intraspecific variations in plant communities with large niche overlaps. In suchcases, including intraspecific variation increases the number of species and strongly affects the community’s abundancestructure. In contrast, when there is strong niche differentiation, the contribution of plant intraspecific variation could beneglected. In addition, the species richness and rank–abundance curve were insensitive to the magnitude of intraspecificvariation, but plant trait distribution increased exponentially when intraspecific variation was included. Our results will beuseful when designing field studies, to determine which data are most informative for various community types.