Species–area relationships in continuous vegetation: Evidence from Palaearctic grasslands

作者：Jürgen Dengler, Thomas J. Matthews, Manuel J. Steinbauer, Sebastian Wolfrum, Steffen Boch, Alessandro Chiarucci, Timo Conradi, Iwona Dembicz, Corrado Marcenò, Itziar García‐Mijangos, Arkadiusz S. Nowak, David Štorch, Werner Ulrich, Juan Antonio Campos, Laura Cancellieri, Marta Carboni, Giampiero Ciaschetti, Pieter De Frenne, Jiří Doležal, Christian Dolnik, Franz Essl, Edy Fantinato, Goffredo Filibeck, John‐Arvid Grytnes, Riccardo Guarino, Behlül Güler, Monika Janišová, Ewelina Klichowska, Łukasz Kozub, АННА АРКАДІЇВНА КУЗЕМКО, Michael J. Manthey, Anne Mimet, Alireza Naqinezhad, Christian Torp Pedersen, Robert K. Peet, Vincent Pellissier, Remigiusz Pielech, Giovanna Potenza, Leonardo Rosati, Massimo Terzi, Orsolya Valkó, Denys Vynokurov, Hannah J. White, Manuela Winkler, Idoia Biurrun · 发表于：Journal of Biogeography · 年份：2019 · DOI：10.1111/jbi.13697 · 被引用次数：103 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Species Distribution and Climate Change、Plant and animal studies

Abstract Aim Species–area relationships (SARs) are fundamental scaling laws in ecology although their shape is still disputed. At larger areas, power laws best represent SARs. Yet, it remains unclear whether SARs follow other shapes at finer spatial grains in continuous vegetation. We asked which function describes SARs best at small grains and explored how sampling methodology or the environment influence SAR shape. Location Palaearctic grasslands and other non‐forested habitats. Taxa Vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens. Methods We used the GrassPlot database, containing standardized vegetation‐plot data from vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens spanning a wide range of grassland types throughout the Palaearctic and including 2,057 nested‐plot series with at least seven grain sizes ranging from 1 cm2 to 1,024 m2. Using nonlinear regression, we assessed the appropriateness of different SAR functions (power, power quadratic, power breakpoint, logarithmic, Michaelis–Menten). Based on AICc, we tested whether the ranking of functions differed among taxonomic groups, methodological settings, biomes or vegetation types. Results The power function was the most suitable function across the studied taxonomic groups. The superiority of this function increased from lichens to bryophytes to vascular plants to all three taxonomic groups together. The sampling method was highly influential as rooted presence sampling decreased the performance of the power function. By contrast, biom...