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Alpine meadow plant community traits and niche under the disturbance of anthills in Northwest Sichuan Province, western China.

XIANG Ze-yu1, ZHANG Li1, LIU Xue-juan2*   

  1. (1Key Laboratory of Tibetan Medicine Research, Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining 810008, China; 2Alxa Forestry and Desert Control Research Institute, Alax Left Banner 750300, Inner Mongolia, China)
  • Online:2016-02-10 Published:2016-02-10

Abstract: As an important ecological disturbance factor in the alpine meadow, anthills can greatly influence the characteristics and ecological niche of plant community in alpine meadow. Alpine meadow plant community with anthill disturbance was studied in September 2012 in Hongyuan, Sichuan. The results showed that the species richness and diversity of the alpine meadow plant community decreased after the anthill disturbance, while the coverage, importance value and niche breadth of Gramineae and Cyperaceae increased. Especially, the niche breadths of gramineous grass Poa pratensis and Elymus nutans were obviously greater than those of the control, becoming the dominant populations. With anthill disturbance, the niche overlap level of alpine meadow plant populations was generally lower, ensuring the longterm ecological coexistence between the dominant populations of Gramineae and Cyperaceae with larger niche breadths and other species. It benefits the disturbed alpine meadow to the succession toward the direction of fine herbage, improving the grazing capacity of the alpine meadow to some extent.

Key words: Saihanba., vegetation landscape, Logistic regression analysis, driving force