Assessing Plant Community Assembly Along an Elevational Gradient: A Functional Niche Hypervolume Approach

Abstract

Niche-based processes, such as environmental filtering and niche differentiation, have been proposed to contribute to the assembly of ecological communities. While functional traits can be useful for testing hypotheses regarding niche-based community assembly, most studies utilizing functional traits to examine such hypotheses have focused on patterns of individual traits or of mean trait values. We tested for signatures of environmental filtering and niche differentiation on the assembly of subalpine meadow communities in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, USA by constructing site-level and species-level trait space hypervolumes from field-collected functional trait data (foliage height, SLA, LDMC). We found a trend of increasing community trait space volume and decreasing community trait space density (species/volume) with increasing elevation. Species-level trait space, however, exhibited no relationship with elevation. Additionally, we found that pair-wise distances of species-level trait space hypervolume increases with elevation. Overall, contrary to conventional hypotheses regarding niche-based community assembly, our results support a pattern of larger community trait space at higher elevations and more “packed” trait space at lower elevations. Incorporation of additional communities, sites, and trait combinations into our study should yield further insights into the patterns observed here.

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