Species-Abundance Models for the Early Postfire Succession of Subalpine Shrub Grassland

Abstract

Fire is one of the principal factors influencing subalpine ecosystem succession. Species numbers and plant compositions are used to determine postfire disturbance, vegetation, structural change, and succession. Ecologists also integrate species diversity and mathematical models to enable researchers to obtain increasingly detailed insights into habitats during post-disturbance restoration processes. This study employed five species-abundance models, namely the niche preemption model, the broken-stick model, the log-normal model, the Zipf model, and the Zipf–Mandelbrot model, to perform fitting analysis on the abundance data of postfire species coverage in shrub grasslands near 369 Hut at Xue Mountain in Shei-Pa National Park, Taiwan. We performed the logarithmic transformation on plant-coverage areas for each period of postfire shrub-grassland succession, and then, based on histograms drawn for species–coverage distribution modes, the test results consistently showed normal distributions (p < 0.05). Species-coverage histograms measuring various periods showed that there were comparatively higher numbers of common species during postfire succession and that the numbers of rare species progressively increased. The fitting results of the five species-abundance models showed that although the most suitable abundance models for each period of postfire succession varied, the majority of these periods demonstrated decent fitting with respect to the Zipf–Mandelbrot model. These findings showed that fuel consumption provided nutrients in a manner that facilitated postfire regeneration. Moreover, dominant species, such as Yushania niitakayamensis, and Miscanthus transmorrisonensis, did not fully occupy growing spaces and resource availabilities; consequently, seeded species were able to grow.