Our official English website, www.x-mol.net, welcomes your feedback! (Note: you will need to create a separate account there.)
Population neighborhood density at different scales between grazed and ungrazed communities
Ecosphere ( IF 2.7 ) Pub Date : 2020-10-16 , DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.3275 Xinting Wang 1 , Chao Jiang 2 , Frank Yonghong Li 3 , Yang Tai 4 , Cunzhu Liang 3 , Yali Hou 1 , Weihua Zhang 1, 4
Ecosphere ( IF 2.7 ) Pub Date : 2020-10-16 , DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.3275 Xinting Wang 1 , Chao Jiang 2 , Frank Yonghong Li 3 , Yang Tai 4 , Cunzhu Liang 3 , Yali Hou 1 , Weihua Zhang 1, 4
Affiliation
It is well recognized that ecological processes are scale‐dependent. Despite this recognition, the influence of scale on population density has still not been explored in detail. While the relationship between population density and overall sampling area is well known, understanding how neighborhood density varies with scale is a persistent challenge. Here, neighborhood density refers to the density of individuals occurring within a ring of radius r and width w located at distance r from the typical individual. In this study, we examined the relationship between population neighborhood density and scale. We then compared the results from the O‐ring analysis between grazed and ungrazed communities in a temperate steppe ecosystem in China. The primary grazers in this ecosystem are domesticated sheep. Our results show that (1) the relationship between neighborhood density and scale can be well described by the O‐ring function; (2) grazing has a substantial impact on neighborhood density and the impact is dependent on spatial scale; specifically, grazing increases the rate of change in neighborhood density across scales and increases plant aggregation at small scales (<0.5 m); and (3) the greater aggregation in grazed communities at larger scales can be attributed to habitat heterogeneity, while the greater aggregation at small scales is likely a result of facilitation between individuals. Together, our results demonstrate that understanding neighborhood density across scales is useful for detecting ecological phenomena and for answering important questions in community ecology, while studies without considering scale dependency of neighborhood density will result in spurious or biased conclusions.
更新日期：2020-10-17
京公网安备 11010802027423号