Plant Functional Trait Responses to Dolomite and Limestone Karst Forests in Southwest China

Abstract

Southwest China is distributed with the largest area of limestone and dolomite karst landscapes in the world, and its ecological environment is very fragile; the problem of rock desertification is particularly prominent. Karst lithological differences make habitats and soil heterogeneity more complex, and vegetation has developed certain morphological and physiological structural characteristics to adapt to these special environments, which will most likely lead to differentiation in vegetation functional characteristics, such as seed size, wood density, life type and flowering time, thus affecting the number and growth of seedlings and young trees and the future succession potential of forest stands in karst-vegetation restoration. Therefore, it is important to understand the differences in species composition and the functional characteristics of dolomite and limestone karst forests. Over a 2-year period, we investigated a total of 3170 individuals from 123 species and analyzed the relationship between the species compositions and the functional characteristics of two karst-forest areas with different lithology (i.e., limestone and dolomite karst). It was found that the average number of species with medium-diameter seeds and medium wood density in dolomite plots was obviously greater than the average number of species in limestone plots, but this reached no significant difference. However, with the gradual restoration of each forest, the height and carbon sequestration capacity of the trees began to diverge, with the relative abundance of species with tall trees and high wood density being significantly higher in limestone plots than in dolomite plots. The species richness of evergreen trees was significantly higher in the limestone plots than in the dolomite plots. There was no significant difference in the relative species richness of flowering plants in the two karst-forest areas during spring–summer and winter–spring seasons; however, the species richness of flowering plants in the limestone karst forests was significantly higher than that of flowering plants in the dolomite karst forests during summer and autumn seasons. These significant traits were very closely related to the species richness of the understory plants. Further insight into the temporal aspects of karst-forest succession is needed to grasp how functional traits affect the restorations of different lithological karst forests to their primary states.