Multi-scale analysis of plant species richness in Serengeti grasslands

Journal of Biogeography

Volumn 34, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 313-323

  Anderson, T Michael ^a,c   Metzger, Kristine L ^b   McNaughton, Samuel J ^a  

^a SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

^c NATIONAL WETLANDS RESEARCH CENTER   (United States)

Author keywords

Climate; Land regions; Landscape; Mean annual precipitation; Plant species richness; Potential evapotranspiration; Scale dependence; Topographic variation; Water energy theory

Indexed keywords

ASSESSMENT METHOD; ENVIRONMENTAL FACTOR; HABITAT SELECTION; HETEROGENEITY; NICHE; PLANT; POTENTIAL EVAPOTRANSPIRATION; SPECIES RICHNESS; TOPOGRAPHIC EFFECT;

AFRICA; EAST AFRICA; SERENGETI NATIONAL PARK; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; TANZANIA;

EID: 33846435697     PISSN: 03050270     EISSN: 13652699     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2006.01598.x     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. Anderson, T.M., Dempewolf, J., Metzger, K.L., Reed, D.N. & Serneels, S. (in press) Generation and maintenance of heterogeneity in the Serengeti ecosystem. Serengeti III: human impacts on ecosystem dynamics (ed. by A.R.E. Sinclair, C. Packer, S.A.R. Mduma and J.M. Fryxell). University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA, in press.
2. Beentje, H.J. (2001) Flora of tropical East Africa. Series in 218 parts. A.A. Balkema, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
3. Bell, G., Lechowicz, M.J. & Waterway, M.J. (2000) Environmental heterogeneity and species diversity of forest sedges. Journal of Ecology, 88, 67-87.
4. Belsky, A.J. (1983) Small-scale pattern in grassland communities in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. Vegetatio, 55, 141-151.
5. Chase, J.M. & Leibold, M.A. (2002) Spatial scale dictates the productivity-biodiversity relationship. Nature, 416, 427-430.
6. Cliff, A.D. & Ord, J.K. (1981) Spatial processes: models and applications. Pion, London.
7. Coughenour, M.B. & Ellis, J.E. (1993) Landscape and climate controls of woody vegetation in a dry tropical ecosystem: Turkana District, Kenya. Journal of Biogeography, 20, 383-398.
8. Crawley, M.J. & Harral, J.E. (2001) Scale dependence in plant biodiversity. Science, 291, 864-868.
9. Currie, D.J. (1991) Energy and large-scale patterns of animal-and plant-species richness. The American Naturalist, 137, 27-49.
10. Darnell, W.L., Staylor, W.F., Gupta, S.K., Ritchey, N.A. & Wilber, A.C. (1992) Seasonal variation of surface radiation budget derived from ISCCP-C1 data. Journal of Geophysical Research, 97, 15741-15760.
11. Dungan, J.L., Perry, J.N., Dale, M.R.T., Legendre, P., Citron-Pousty, S., Fortin, M.-J., Jakomulska, A., Miriti, M. & Rosenberg, M.S. (2002) A balanced view of scale in spatial statistical analysis. Ecography, 25, 626-640.
12. Field, R., O'Brien, E.M. & Whittaker, R.J. (2005) Global models for predicting woody plant richness from climate: development and evaluation. Ecology, 86, 2263-2277.
13. Fleishman, E. & MacNally, R. (2002) Topographic determinants of faunal nestedness in Great Basin butterfly assemblages: applications to conservation planning. Conservation Biology, 16, 422-429.
14. Freund, R.J. & Little, R.C. (2000) SAS system for regression. SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA.
15. Gerresheim, K. (1974) The Serengeti landscape classification. Serengeti Ecological Monitoring Programme, Serengeti Research Institute, Seronera, Tanzania.
16. Grace, J.B. (1999) The factors controlling species density in herbaceous plant communities: an assessment. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics, 2, 1-28.
17. Grace, J.B. (2001) The roles of community biomass and species pools in the regulation of plant diversity. Oikos, 92, 193-207.
18. Grace, J.B. (2006) Structural equation modeling and natural systems. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
19. Graham, M.H. (2003) Confronting multicollinearity in ecological multiple regression. Ecology, 84, 2809-2815.
20. Gross, K.L., Willig, M.R., Gough, L., Inouye, R. & Cox, S.B. (2000) Patterns of species density and productivity at different spatial scales in herbaceous plant communities. Oikos, 89, 417-427.
21. Hanski, I. (1998) Metapopulation dynamics. Nature, 396, 41-49.
22. Hawkins, B.A., Field, R., Cornell, H.V., Currie, D.J., Guegan, J., Kaufman, D.M., Kerr, J.T., Mittelbach, G.G., Oberdorff, T., O'Brien, E.M., Porter, E.E. & Turner, J.R.G. (2003) Energy, water, and broad-scale geographic patterns of species richness. Ecology, 84, 3105-3117.
23. Hurlbert, A.H. & White, E.P. (2005) Disparity between range map- and survey-based analyses of species richness: patterns, processes and implications. Ecology Letters, 8, 319-327.
24. Jager, T. (1982) Soils of the Serengeti woodlands, Tanzania. Agricultural Research Report 912/Serengeti Research Institute Publication no. 301. Pudoc, Wageningen, the Netherlands.
25. Kauffman, E.G. & Fagerstrom, J.A. (1993) The Phanerozoic evolution of reef diversity. Species diversity in ecological communities: historical and geographical perspectives (ed. by R.E. Ricklefs and D. Schluter), pp. 315-329. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA.
26. Kerr, J.T. & Packer, L. (1997) Habitat heterogeneity as a determinant of mammal species richness in high-energy regions. Nature, 385, 252-254.
27. Kubota, Y., Murata, H. & Kikuzawa, K. (2004) Effects of topographic heterogeneity on tree species richness and stand dynamics in a subtropical forest in Okinawa Island, southern Japan. Journal of Ecology, 92, 230-240.
28. Legendre, P. & Legendre, L. (1998) Numerical ecology. Elsevier, Amsterdam.
29. McKane, R.B., Johnson, L.C., Shaver, G.R., Nadelhoffer, K.J., Rastetter, E.B., Fry, B., Giblin, A.E., Kielland, K., Kwiatkowski, B.L., Laundre, J.A. & Murray, G. (2002) Resource-based niches provide a basis for plant species diversity and dominance in arctic tundra. Nature, 412, 68-71.
30. McNaughton, S.J. (1983) Serengeti grassland ecology: the role of composite environmental factors and contingency in community organization. Ecological Monographs, 53, 291-320.
31. McNaughton, S.J. (1985) Ecology of a grazing ecosystem: the Serengeti. Ecological Monographs, 55, 259-294.
32. McNaughton, S.J., Ruess, R.W. & Seagle, S.W. (1988) Large mammals and process dynamics in African ecosystems. Bioscience, 38, 794-800.
33. Mittelbach, G.G., Steiner, C.F., Scheiner, S.M., Gross, K.L., Reynolds, H.L., Waide, R.B., Willig, M.R., Dodson, S.I. & Gough, L. (2001) What is the observed relationship between species richness and productivity? Ecology, 82, 2381-2396.
34. Mittelbach, G.G., Scheiner, S.M. & Steiner, G.F. (2003) What is the observed relationship between species richness and productivity? Reply. Ecology, 84, 3390-3395.
35. Norton-Griffiths, M., Herlocker, D. & Pennycuick, L. (1975) Patterns of rainfall in the Serengeti ecosystem, Tanzania. East African Wildlife Journal, 13, 347-374.
36. O'Brien, E.M. (1998) Water-energy dynamics, climate, and prediction of woody plant species richness: an interim general model. Journal of Biogeography, 25, 379-398.
37. O'Brien, E.M., Whittaker, R.J. & Field, R. (1998) Climate and woody plant diversity in southern Africa: relationships at species, genus and family levels. Ecography, 21, 495-509.
38. O'Brien, E.M., Field, R. & Whittaker, R.J. (2000) Climatic gradients in woody plant (tree and shrub) diversity: water-energy dynamics, residual variation, and topography. Oikos, 89, 588-600.
39. Palmer, M.W. (1991) Patterns of species richness among North Carolina hardwood forests: tests of two hypotheses. Journal of Vegetation Science, 2, 361-366.
40. Palmer, M.W. & White, P.S. (1994) Scale dependence and the species-area relationship. The American Naturalist, 144, 717-740.
41. Pausas, J.G. & Austin, M.P. (2001) Patterns of plant species richness in relation to different environments: an appraisal. Journal of Vegetation Science, 12, 153-166.
42. Pausas, J.G., Carreras, J., Ferré, A. & Font, X. (2003) Coarsescale plant species richness in relation to environmental heterogeneity. Journal of Vegetation Science, 14, 661-668.
43. Peterson, D.L. & Parker, V.T. (1998) Ecological scale: theories and applications. Columbia University Press, New York.
44. Priestly, C.H.B. & Taylor, R.J. (1972) On the assessment of surface heat flux and evaporation using large-scale parameters. Monthly Weather Review, 100, 81-92.
45. Rahbek, C. & Graves, G.R. (2001) Multiscale assessment of patterns of avian species richness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 98, 4534-4539.
46. Rey Benayas, J.M. & Scheiner, S.M. (2002) Plant diversity, biogeography and environment in Iberia: patterns and possible causal factors. Journal of Vegetation Science, 13, 245-258.
47. Roberts, D.W. (1986) Ordination on the basis of fuzzy set theory. Vegetatio, 66, 123-131.
48. SAS Institute (2002) SAS version 8.01. SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA.
49. Scheiner, S.M. & Jones, S. (2002) Diversity, productivity and scale in Wisconsin vegetation. Evolutionary Ecology Research, 4, 1097-1117.
50. Scheiner, S.M., Cox, S.B., Willig, M., Mittelbach, G.G., Osenberg, C. & Kaspari, M. (2000) Species richness, species-area curves and Simpson's paradox. Evolutionary Ecology Research, 2, 791-802.
51. Schneider, D.C. (2001) The rise of scale in ecology. Bioscience, 51, 545-553.
52. Shmida, A. & Wilson, M.V. (1985) Biological determinants of species diversity. Journal of Biogeography, 12, 1-20.
53. Silvertown, J., Dodd, M.E., Gowing, D.J.G. & Mountford, J.O. (1999) Hydrologically defined niches reveal a basis for species richness in plant communities. Nature, 400, 61-63.
54. Sinclair, A.R.E. & Norton-Griffiths, M. (1979) Serengeti: dynamics of an ecosystem. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA.
55. Stark, J.M. (1994) Causes of soil nutrient heterogeneity at different scales. Exploitation of environmental heterogeneity by plants: ecophysiological processes above- and belowground (ed. by M.M. Caldwell and R.W. Pearcy), pp. 255-284. Academic Press, San Diego, CA, USA.
56. Stohlgren, T.J., Bull, K.A. & Otsuki, Y. (1998) Comparison of rangeland vegetation sampling techniques in central grasslands. Journal of Range Management, 51, 164-172.
57. Tilman, D. (1982) Resource competition and community structure. Monographs in Population Biology No. 17. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA.
58. VAST (2004) Vascular Tropicos, Missouri Botanical Gardens. http://mobot.mobot.org/W3T/Search/vast.html
59. Vetaas, O.R. & Grytnes, J.A. (2002) Distribution of vascular plant species richness endemic and richness along the Himalayan elevation gradient in Nepal. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 11, 291-301.
60. Watson, D.F. & Philip, G.M. (1985) A refinement of inverse distance weighted interpolation. Geo-Processing, 2, 315-327.
61. Whittaker, R.J. & Heegaard, E. (2003) What is the observed relationship between species richness and productivity? Comment. Ecology, 84, 3384-3390.
62. Whittaker, R.J., Willis, K.J. & Field, R. (2001) Scale and species richness: towards a general hierarchical theory of species diversity. Journal of Biogeography, 28, 453-470.
63. de Wit, H.A. (1978) Soils and grassland types of the Serengeti plains (Tanzania): their distributions and interrelations. PhD thesis, University of Wageningen, the Netherlands.
64. Witkowski, E.T.F. & O'Connor, T.G. (1996) Topo-edaphic, floristic and physiognomic gradients of woody plants in a semi-arid African savanna woodland. Vegetatio, 124, 9-23.
65. Wright, D.H. (1983) Species-energy theory: an extension of species-area theory. Oikos, 41, 496-506.
66. Yair, A. (1990) The role of topography and surface cover upon soil formation along hillslopes in arid climates. Geomorphology, 3, 287-299.
67. Zoebel, M. (1997) The role of the species pools in determining plant species richness: an alternative explanation of species coexistence? Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 12, 266-269.