Species are changing their elevational distributions in response to climate change, leading to biodiversity loss and changes in community structure. Yet whether native and non-native species have consistent elevational shifts remains to be evaluated. Subtropical mountains are rich in biodiversity, sensitive to climate change, and are experiencing high risks of biological invasion. Hence exploring the changes in species elevational distributions induced by climate change in subtropical mountains is an urgent need. Here, we explored the impact of climate change on the elevational distribution of seed plant species in Jinfo Mountain (Mt. Jinfo), a subtropical mountain in China with rich plant diversity. Notably, we compared the elevational redistributions of native and non-native plants in response to climate change. The results showed that the elevational centroids of native plant species moved downhill, while those of non-native plants shifted upward on average. The upper limit of native plants shifted downward, while the upper limit of non-native plants shifted upward on average. The elevational shifts of non-native plants were dominated by changes in the upper range limits, while those of native plants were affected by the lower limits. These opposite elevational shifts of native vs non-native species led to the increase in the elevational range size of the non-native plants, but decrease in the elevational range size of native plants, especially in high altitudes. The differences in the directions and magnitudes of elevational shifts between the native and non-native plants are mainly due to differences in their climate adaptation. Changes in temperature and precipitation influenced the elevational range shifts of native plants but not of non-native ones. This study provides a new perspective for understanding the elevational redistribution of native and non-native plant species in subtropical mountains, and suggests that climate change has stronger influence on native than non-native species.

Many ecological restoration programs have been implemented in China during the last two decades. At the same time, the vegetation has turned green significantly in China. However, few studies have directly evaluated the contribution of the ecological restoration programs to vegetation greening in comparison with the contribution of climate change using high-resolution data of afforestation areas at the national scale. We used newly compiled high-resolution data on yearly forest plantation and mountain closure, the daily climate data from the 2480 meteorological stations and GIMMS 3g NDVI data. We used a multiple linear regression model to compare the influence of temperature, precipitation, and ecological restoration programs on NDVI dynamics. We then used the hierarchical variance partitioning method to evaluate the relative contribution of temperature, precipitation, and ecological restoration programs on NDVI dynamics. We found a significant greening trend in China from 1999 to 2015 with an annual increase rate of 0.0017 yr−1 in the mean growing season NDVI. The ecological restoration programs dominated the vegetation greening in northern China and the southern coastal regions, indicating a good performance of restoration programs in these regions. In contrast, temperature or precipitation dominated the vegetation greening in southwestern China, Inner Mongolia and the implementation regions of several ecological restoration programs in northeastern China. Among the ecological restoration programs except the Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program, the effect of ecological restoration programs on vegetation greening was stronger than the total effects of temperature and precipitation changes. Our study presents a systematic assessment on the contribution of ecological restoration programs to the vegetation greening in China, accessed the role on vegetation greening of different ecosystem restoration programs. We analyzed the reasons for the differences in the contribution of different ecological restoration programs to vegetation greening and provided insights facilitating policy makers to prioritize future restoration planning.

Abstract Vegetation community complexity is a critical factor influencing terrestrial ecosystem stability. China, the country leading the world in vegetation greening resulting from human activities, has experienced dramatic changes in vegetation community composition during the past 30 years. However, how China's vegetation community complexity varies spatially and temporally remains unclear. Here, we examined the spatial pattern of China's vegetation community complexity and its temporal changes from the 1980s to 2015 using two vegetation maps of China as well as more than half a million field samples. Spatially, China's vegetation community complexity distribution is primarily dominated by elevation, although temperature and precipitation can be locally more influential than elevation when they become the factors limiting plant growth. Temporally, China's vegetation community complexity shows a significant decreasing trend during the past 30 years, despite the observed vegetation greening trend. Prevailing climate warming across China exhibits a significant negative correlation with the decrease in vegetation community complexity, but this correlation varies with biogeographical regions. The intensity of human activities have an overall negative influence on vegetation community complexity, but vegetation conservation and restoration efforts can have a positive effect on maintaining vegetation composition complexity, informing the critical role of vegetation management policies in achieving the sustainable development goal.

Soil microbes assemble in highly complex and diverse microbial communities, and microbial diversity patterns and their drivers have been studied extensively. However, diversity correlations and co-occurrence patterns between bacterial, fungal, and archaeal domains and between microbial functional groups in arid regions remain poorly understood. Here we assessed the relationships between the diversity and abundance of bacteria, fungi, and archaea and explored how environmental factors influence these relationships. We sampled soil along a 1500-km-long aridity gradient in temperate grasslands of Inner Mongolia (China) and sequenced the 16S rRNA gene of bacteria and archaea and the ITS2 gene of fungi. The diversity correlations and co-occurrence patterns between bacterial, fungal, and archaeal domains and between different microbial functional groups were evaluated using α-diversity and co-occurrence networks based on microbial abundance. Our results indicate insignificant correlations among the diversity patterns of bacterial, fungal, and archaeal domains using α-diversity but mostly positive correlations among diversity patterns of microbial functional groups based on α-diversity and co-occurrence networks along the aridity gradient. These results suggest that studying microbial diversity patterns from the perspective of functional groups and co-occurrence networks can provide additional insights on patterns that cannot be accessed using only overall microbial α-diversity. Increase in aridity weakens the diversity correlations between bacteria and fungi and between bacterial and archaeal functional groups, but strengthens the positive diversity correlations between bacterial functional groups and between fungal functional groups and the negative diversity correlations between bacterial and fungal functional groups. These variations of the diversity correlations are associated with the different responses of microbes to environmental factors, especially aridity. Our findings demonstrate the complex responses of microbial community structure to environmental conditions (especially aridity) and suggest that understanding diversity correlations and co-occurrence patterns between soil microbial groups is essential for predicting changes in microbial communities under future climate change in arid regions.

Branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs) are membrane lipids of certain soil bacteria, and their relative distributions are used as a proxy for air temperature and soil pH. While temperature is recorded by the degree of methylation, soil pH is reflected by the amount of internal cyclization and the relative abundance of 6-methyl isomers. Since the exact producers of brGDGTs remain enigmatic, the mechanisms underlying their empirical relationships with temperature and soil pH, and thus the reliability of brGDGT-based paleorecords, are not well understood, especially in arid regions where mean annual precipitation (MAP) is less than 500 mm. Here, we evaluate the influence of soil pH and aridity on brGDGT distributions in grassland soils along an aridity transect (MAP = 173–415 mm) in Inner Mongolia. While the absolute and fractional abundance of 6-methyl brGDGTs increases with increasing soil pH and aridity, following the trend in the global surface soil calibration dataset, the degree of cyclization does not. This indicates that in arid regions, soil pH reconstructions based on the relative contribution of 6-methyl brGDGTs are likely more reliable than those based on the degree of cyclization. Furthermore, 5- and 6-methyl brGDGTs respond differently to aridity, supporting prior suggestions that the distribution of brGDGTs could be the result of changes in bacterial community composition instead of the direct physiological alteration of molecular structures by the source organisms. Analysis of the bacterial community composition in the same soil transect indicates that the relative abundance of Acidobacteria, the phylum hosting potential brGDGT source-organisms, shows a poor relationship with aridity. Instead, Verrucomicrobia (r2 = 0.70, p < 0.01), and its subclass Spartobacteria (r2 = 0.70, p < 0.01) in particular, show a significant negative correlation with aridity, resembling that of 5-methyl brGDGTs. Similarly, Actinobacteria are positively correlated with aridity (r2 = 0.59, p < 0.01), following the same trend as that of 6-methyl brGDGTs. The ability of certain cultures of Verrucomicrobia and Actinobacteria to produce iso-C15:0 fatty acids that could serve as building blocks for brGDGTs hints that Verrucomicrobia and Actinobacteria could possibly produce brGDGTs in arid soils.

<p id="p00005">过去1个世纪以来, 全球气候变化显著并已成为全球生物多样性面临的重要威胁之一。如何利用有限的资源最有效地保护生物多样性已成为亟待解决的最重要科学问题之一。山地因其具有较高的生境异质性、气候多样性和较低的人类活动干扰, 已成为最重要的生物多样性避难所, 也具有较高的生态服务价值, 在生物多样性保护中扮演着重要角色。但山地更容易受到气候变化的影响, 山地地区较为剧烈的气候变化将对山地生态系统的稳定性及其多样性造成严重威胁。理解山地物种海拔分布对气候变化的响应和潜在机理, 以及气候变化带来的物种海拔分布变化的负面效应, 将为全球气候变化背景下的山地生物多样性保护提供参考依据。本文综述了全球山地地区的气候变化情况, 总结了物种海拔迁移的研究进展, 重点讨论了山地物种分布最适海拔、海拔上下限和海拔分布范围变化的研究进展及不足, 比较了不同地区和不同类群物种海拔迁移的差异性, 以及物种对气候变化响应的滞后性。从生物及非生物因素等多个角度概括了物种海拔迁移响应气候变化的潜在机理, 评估并总结了气候变化引起的物种海拔分布所产生的负面效应, 主要对物种向上迁移对高海拔地区物种多样性的影响、物种迁移带来的分布区改变导致的物种灭绝风险以及物种海拔分布变化导致的种间相互作用改变等方面进行全面探讨。最后, 展望了未来在此领域研究中应注意的问题, 提出了在未来气候变化下山地生物多样性保护需要采取的措施, 强调应重点关注对气候变化较为敏感的类群及生物多样性区域, 加强中国山地物种对气候变化响应的监测网络建设和研究力度, 重点加强监测气候变化对动植物互作关系的影响。</p>

<p id="p00010">The world is currently experiencing a biodiversity crisis, and climate and land-cover changes are now recognized as two major threats to biodiversity. China is one of the mega-biodiversity countries and the threatened species list of China&#x02019;s higher plants was reported in 2017. This list provided important data for biological conservation and protected area planning from regional to global scales. However, it was mainly based on the past and current status of species population and distribution, while future responses of species to climate and land-cover changes were rarely considered. This will lead to an underestimation of future local extinction risks. Using high-resolution species distribution data of woody plants and species distribution models, we evaluated the impacts of climate and land-cover changes on woody species distributions and estimated changes in the extent of occurrence (EOA) for each species. Our results indicate that 12.9%-40.5% of woody species will be threatened under different climate and dispersal scenarios. Based on these results, we updated the list of threatened woody species in China based on the IUCN Red List Criteria. This new list of threatened woody species provides important data for assessing the conservation priorities of woody plants, for the planning of future nature reserve extension, for improving the performance of nature reserves under future global change scenarios, and for updating the list of threatened species of other taxa.</p><table-wrap id="T2"><label/><caption xml:lang="en"><p id="p00020"><strong>Database/Dataset Profile</strong></p></caption><table><thead></thead><tbody><tr><td valign="top" align="justify" style="border-top:1px solid #000;border-bottom:1px solid #000;">Title</td><td valign="top" align="justify" style="border-top:1px solid #000;border-bottom:1px solid #000;">A new list of threatened woody species in China under future global change scenarios</td></tr><tr><td valign="top" align="justify" style="border-top:1px solid #000;" width="230">Authors</td><td valign="top" align="justify" style="border-top:1px solid #000;">Shijia Peng, Yuan Luo, Hongyu Cai, Xiaoling Zhang, Zhiheng Wang</td></tr><tr><td valign="top" align="justify">Corresponding author</td><td valign="top" align="justify">Zhiheng Wang (zhiheng.wang@pku.edu.cn)</td></tr><tr><td valign="top" align="justify">Time range</td><td valign="top" align="justify">Current-2070</td></tr><tr><td valign="top" align="justify">Geographical scope</td><td valign="top" align="justify">China</td></tr><tr><td valign="top" align="justify">File size</td><td valign="top" align="justify">2.06 MB</td></tr><tr><td valign="top" align="justify">Data format</td><td valign="top" align="justify">*.xlsx</td></tr><tr><td valign="top" align="justify">Data link</td><td valign="top" align="justify"><a href="http://dataopen.info/home/datafile/index/id/256">http://dataopen.info/home/datafile/index/id/256</a><br><a href="http://doi.org/10.24899/do.202205002">http://doi.org/10.24899/do.202205002</a><br><a href="https://www.biodiversity-science.net/fileup/1005-0094/DATA/2021459.zip">https://www.biodiversity-science.net/fileup/1005-0094/DATA/2021459.zip</a></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" align="justify" style="border-bottom:1px solid #000;">Database/Dataset <br>composition</td><td valign="top" align="justify" style="border-bottom:1px solid #000;">The dataset consists of two data files: (1) The classification of 11,405 woody plant species as threatened or non-threatened under current (Qin et al, <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b17">2017</xref>) and future climate and dispersal change scenarios in China (1: Threatened species; 0: Non-threatened species); (2) The conservation status of 11,405 woody species under current (Qin et al, <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b17">2017</xref>) and future climate and dispersal change scenarios (EX: Extinction; CR: Critically Endangered; EN: Endangered; VU: Vulnerable; LC: Least Concern).</td></tr></tbody></table></table-wrap>

BACKGROUND: The dataset providing information on the geographic distribution of Oxytropis species on the territory of Asian Russia is discussed. The data were extracted from different sources including prominent floras and check-lists, Red Data books, published research on congeneric species and authors' field observations and mainly cover less-studied, remote regions of Russia. The dataset should be of value to applied, basic and theoretical plant biologists and ecologists interested in the Oxytropis species. NEW INFORMATION: The dataset includes 5172 distribution records for 143 species and 15 subspecies of genus Oxytropis DC. (Fabaceae Lindl.) in Asian Russia. The dataset fills gaps in the distribution of locoweeds in the study area and contains precise coordinates for many of rare and endemic species.

Abstract Foliar stable nitrogen (N) isotopes (δ15N) generally reflect N availability to plants and have been used to infer about changes thereof. However, previous studies of temporal trends in foliar δ15N have ignored the influence of confounding factors, leading to uncertainties on its indication to N availability. In this study, we measured foliar δ15N of 1811 herbarium specimens from 12 plant species collected in southern China forests from 1920 to 2010. We explored how changes in atmospheric CO2, N deposition and global warming have affected foliar δ15N and N concentrations ([N]) and identified whether N availability decreased in southern China. Across all species, foliar δ15N significantly decreased by 0.82‰ over the study period. However, foliar [N] did not decrease significantly, implying N homeostasis in forest trees in the region. The spatiotemporal patterns of foliar δ15N were explained by mean annual temperature (MAT), atmospheric CO2 (PCO2), atmospheric N deposition, and foliar [N]. The spatiotemporal trends of foliar [N] were explained by MAT, temperature seasonality, PCO2, and N deposition. N deposition within the rates from 5.3 to 12.6 kg N ha−1 year−1 substantially contributed to the temporal decline in foliar δ15N. The decline in foliar δ15N was not accompanied by changes in foliar [N] and therefore does not necessarily reflect a decline in N availability. This is important to understand changes in N availability, which is essential to validate and parameterize biogeochemical cycles of N.

生态学研究的宗旨是澄清有机体与生物和非生物环境之间的关系. 作为生态学研究的基石, 生态位概念的提出用以刻画物种的生态学意义, 量化其对环境的需求及影响, 从而揭示调控物种分布、群落构建、食物网动态等生态学过程的机理. 生态位概念发展已有百年历史, 但人们对其内涵、外延等依然不甚了解, 不知如何量化, 生态位相关理论面临严峻考验. 为此, 本文简要追溯生态位概念发展的主要历程和脉络, 梳理生态位概念与竞争排除、物种共存和群落构建等群落生态学核心理论之间的关系; 从生物与环境互馈演化的视角, 再思生态位何以能解释几乎所有的生态学现象, 却又难预测任何机理和模式. 本文认为生态位不仅是物种生态学作用和影响的体现、是群落动态的驱动因素, 更是有机体适应群落环境的结果; 是理解生态学规律的必要概念框架, 却难以成为解析方法. 进而提出动态生态位(dynamic niche)概念框架, 以整合有机体属性变化、生态-演化互馈以及随机过程对物种适合度动态和群落构建的重要影响, 更新生态位概念, 为重构群落生态学理论铺垫基础

The effects of contemporary climate, habitat heterogeneity, and long-term climate change on species richness are well studied for woody plants in forest ecosystems, but poorly understood for herbaceous plants, especially in alpine-arctic ecosystems. Here, we aim to test if the previously proposed hypothesis based on the richness-environment relationship could explain the variation in richness patterns of the typical alpine-arctic herbaceous genus Saxifraga.Using a newly compiled distribution database of 437 Saxifraga species, we estimated the species richness patterns for all species, narrow- and wide-ranged species. We used generalized linear models and simultaneous autoregressive models to evaluate the effects of contemporary climate, habitat heterogeneity, and historical climate on species richness patterns. Partial regressions were used to determine the independent and shared effects of different variables. Four widely used models were tested to identify their predictive power in explaining patterns of species richness.We found that temperature was negatively correlated with the richness patterns of all and wide-ranged species, and that was the most important environmental factor, indicating a strong conservatism of its ancestral temperate niche. Habitat heterogeneity and long-term climate change were the best predictors of the spatial variation of narrow-ranged species richness. Overall, the combined model containing five predictors can explain ca. 40~50% of the variation in species richness. We further argued that additional evolutionary and biogeographical processes might have also played an essential role in shaping the Saxifraga diversity patterns and should be considered in future studies.

Summary The documentation of biodiversity distribution through species range identification is crucial for macroecology, biogeography, conservation, and restoration. However, for plants, species range maps remain scarce and often inaccurate. We present a novel approach to map species ranges at a global scale, integrating polygon mapping and species distribution modelling (SDM). We develop a polygon mapping algorithm by considering distances and nestedness of occurrences. We further apply an SDM approach considering multiple modelling algorithms, complexity levels, and pseudo-absence selections to map the species at a high spatial resolution and intersect it with the generated polygons. We use this approach to construct range maps for all 1957 species of Fagales and Pinales with data compilated from multiple sources. We construct high-resolution global species richness maps of these important plant clades, and document diversity hotspots for both clades in southern and south-western China, Central America, and Borneo. We validate the approach with two representative genera, Quercus and Pinus, using previously published coarser range maps, and find good agreement. By efficiently producing high-resolution range maps, our mapping approach offers a new tool in the field of macroecology for studying global species distribution patterns and supporting ongoing conservation efforts.

The tree of life (TOL) is severely threatened by climate and land-cover changes. Preserving the TOL is urgent, but has not been included in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Protected areas (PAs) are fundamental for biological conservation. However, we know little about the effectiveness of existing PAs in preserving the TOL of plants and how to prioritize PA expansion for better TOL preservation under future climate and land-cover changes. Here, using high-resolution distribution maps of 8732 woody species in China and phylogeny-based Zonation, we find that current PAs perform poorly in preserving the TOL both at present and in 2070s. The geographical coverage of TOL branches by current PAs is approx. 9%, and less than 3% of the identified priority areas for preserving the TOL are currently protected. Interestingly, the geographical coverage of TOL branches by PAs will be improved from 9% to 52–79% by the identified priority areas for PA expansion. Human pressures in the identified priority areas are high, leading to high cost for future PA expansion. We thus suggest that besides nature reserves and national parks, other effective area-based conservation measures should be considered. Our study argues for the inclusion of preserving the TOL in the post-2020 conservation framework, and provides references for decision-makers to preserve the Earth's evolutionary history.

Protected areas (PAs) play a pivotal role in maintaining viable populations of species and minimizing their habitat loss. Globally, there are currently over 200,000 PAs that cover approximately 15% of land area. The post-2020 global biodiversity framework aims to expand this coverage to 30% by 2030. However, focusing only on the percentage coverage of PAs without evaluating their effectiveness may fail to achieve conservation goals. Here, we use a multidimensional approach incorporating species, climate and anthropogenic vulnerabilities to assess the threat levels in over 2500 PAs in China. We identify nearly 10% of PAs as the most threatened PAs in China and about one-fifth PAs as hotspots of climate and anthropogenic vulnerabilities. We also find high climate instability in species vulnerability hotspots, suggesting an elevated likelihood of species' extirpation therein. Our framework could be useful in assessing resiliency of global protected lands and also in selecting near optimal areas for their future expansion.

China is one of the diversity centers of gymnosperms. Nearly one-fifth (195 species) of gymnosperms are located in China, but 69 species are threatened. To date, the conservation status of gymnosperms, especially threatened gymnosperms in China, remains largely unknown, which seriously restricts the comprehensive protection of gymnosperms. Understanding the distribution pattern of species richness and exploring the relationships between species richness and environmental factors are key steps for their protection. In this study, we first constructed a database for the 69 threatened species of gymnosperms with 13 270 distribution records. It is found that 31 of the grid cells (50 × 50 km) cover all threatened gymnosperm species in China, and the grid cells of threatened gymnosperms are mainly distributed in the southern area of the Yellow River, with a distribution center in the Western Sichuan Plateau. Then, we evaluated the conservation status of threatened gymnosperms, and the results indicate that 9 (13%) threatened gymnosperms are distributed outside of nature reserves. Therefore, there are still conservation gaps in the protection of threatened gymnosperms in China. We should give more attention to unprotected threatened gymnosperms and conduct taxonomic studies on the species without detailed distribution records. Finally, conservation priority areas and priority conservation levels of threatened gymnosperms in China were proposed. The Western Sichuan Plateau is the most important conservation priority area of threatened gymnosperms. This study will shed light on plant protection and forest management in China.

In natural forests at a demographic equilibrium state, the size frequency distribution (SFD) of trees is linked with their size-dependent growth and mortality rates. While the mean growth rate (MGR) of each size class is generally used for determining the SFD, the variance in the growth rate (VGR) has always been ignored. Here, based on the analyses with Kolmogorov forward equation, we show that in general, the VGR can flatten the slope of the SFD and, in particular, can address the contradiction between the size-dependent MGR and the −2 power-law SFD in the metabolic scaling theory. We traced the origin of the VGR to the intrinsic stochasticity in the allometric growth coefficients of trees and deduced its functional form based on variance propagation. Using the forest censuses data from Barro Colorado Island, we verified the prediction of the VGR and indicated its indispensability in the theory of forest size-structure formation.

Plant species richness (PSR) is known to affect soil organic carbon (SOC) storage. However, due to the complex origin and composition of SOC, mechanisms driving the PSR-SOC relationship are not yet fully revealed, hampering an accurate prediction of SOC dynamics under changing plant diversity. Here we investigate the effect of PSR on SOC accumulation along a natural PSR and stand age gradient in a subtropical forest with plot, litter and soil properties being considered. Biomarkers and soil fractionation are used to delineate plant and microbial components of SOC and their influences on the PSR-SOC relationship in the topsoil (0–10 cm) versus subsoil (30–40 cm). We show that PSR does positively affect SOC concentrations at both depths even after considering the effects of substrate, edaphic properties and stand age. However, the PSR-SOC relationship is driven by different pathways in the topsoil versus subsoil. In the topsoil, PSR exerts a strong additive effect on SOC accumulation after the positive influence of substrate, edaphic properties and stand age, mainly regulated by plant-derived components (represented by lignin phenols, light fraction and particulate organic matter), followed by microbial residues. By contrast, PSR has a positive effect on the accrual of microbial-derived components (represented by amino sugars and mineral-associated organic matter) but not plant residues likely via affecting dissolved organic matter (DOM) and nitrogen availability in the subsoil (i.e., DOM-microbial pathway). As a result, microbial-derived components dominate SOC variations in the subsoil, while plant-derived components play a more important role in the topsoil. These findings provide novel information on the mechanistic links between PSR and SOC accumulation at different depths and highlight the role of PSR on long-term carbon sink potentials of soils, which may aid in predicting soil carbon dynamics with plant diversity changes in Earth's system model.