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On the relative importance of landscape variables to plant diversity and phylogenetic community structure on uninhabited islands, South Korea

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Abstract

Context

Although there have been methodological advances in the analysis of biodiversity and landscape properties, most studies in landscape ecology primarily explore whether certain landscape properties, such as island area and isolation, have universal effects on species-centric measures.

Objectives

We assessed how landscape variables drive species richness, phylogenetic diversity (PD), and phylogenetic community structure. Moreover, we explored the dominant processes structuring plant community assembly, including phylogenetic community structure.

Methods

We used plant data from 235 uninhabited islands in the western and southern seas, South Korea. Species richness, Faith’s PD, and standardized effect size of mean pairwise phylogenetic distance (SES.MPD) were quantified for three plant groups, all, woody, and herbaceous plants for each island. Island area, distance from mainland, habitat heterogeneity, and structural connectivity were also calculated to examine the relationships between indices of plant diversity and community structure.

Results

The relative importance of landscape variables differed among indices of diversity and community structure as well as among plant groups. Island area and distance from mainland were the main drivers of species richness and PD across plant groups, whereas distance from mainland significantly affected community structure measured by SES.MPD. We found that the community structure in islands farther from mainland showed phylogenetic clustering patterns driven by niche-based deterministic processes across the three plant groups.

Conclusions

We found that community structure analysis provides more information related to ecological processes and assembly mechanisms than diversity indices alone. Therefore, we recommend that community structure analysis with plant diversity should be implemented as an additional measure of biodiversity for landscape ecology and for conservation planning in island ecosystems.

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Acknowledgements

This study was conducted with the support of “R&D Program for Forest Science Technology (Project No. 2019150C10-1923-0301)” provided by Korea Forest Service (Korea Forestry Promotion Institute). This study was also supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2020R1A2C2011226).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forest Environmental Sciences, Gyeongsang National University (Institute of Agricultural and Life Science), Jinjudaero 501, Jinju, 52828, Republic of Korea

    Hyungho Kim

  2. Department of Forestry, Environment and Systems, Kookmin University, 77 Jeongneungro, Seongbukgu, Seoul, 02707, Republic of Korea

    Chang-Bae Lee

  3. Creative Convergence Forest Science Specialist Training Center, Kookmin University, 77 Jeongneungro, Seongbukgu, Seoul, 02707, Republic of Korea

    Chang-Bae Lee

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  1. Hyungho Kim
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Correspondence to Chang-Bae Lee.

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Kim, H., Lee, CB. On the relative importance of landscape variables to plant diversity and phylogenetic community structure on uninhabited islands, South Korea. Landscape Ecol 36, 209–221 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-020-01134-1

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