Plant diversity on islands in the Anthropocene: Integrating the effects of the theory of island biogeography and human activities

作者：Jinliang Liu, Tengteng Liu, Yuanyuan Zhou, Yi Chen, Lijing Lu, Xinjie Jin, Renyong Hu, Yongpu Zhang, Yongpu Zhang, Yonghua Zhang, Yonghua Zhang · 发表于：Basic and Applied Ecology · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1016/j.baae.2023.07.006 · 被引用次数：19 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Plant and animal studies、Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies

Understanding how the complexities of biodiversity are maintained on islands has long been one of the central issues studied in conservation biology. With the global onset of anthropogenically driven biodiversity changes, the influence of anthropogenic activities challenges the applicability of the widely accepted Equilibrium Theory of Island Biogeography (ETIB). This study aimed to test how island area, isolation (MD: distance to the mainland, and ND: distance to the nearest island), and human activities (habitat heterogeneity, and proportion of road area relative to island area to refer the human impact on the island) separately and jointly affect the species diversity of vascular plants. The number of plant species with different growth forms (woody plants, herbs, and lianas) was calculated on 35 islands in Sanyang Wetland, which is a human-dominated wetland near the highly populated city of Wenzhou, China. We also evaluated the relative importance of these variables together on the number of species using a random forest analysis. The number of species increased with increasing island area and habitat heterogeneity and decreased with increasing isolation for different growth forms. A significant, positive relationship was observed between the number of species and proportion of road area for herbs, but not for woody plants and lianas. Habitat heterogeneity was the most important predictor for all plants, proportion of road area was the most important predictor for herbs, ...