Scale Change and Correlation of Plant Functional Characteristics in the Desert Community of Ebinur Lake

Abstract

The difference of functional traits among different species is the basis of species coexistence in natural ecosystems, and the variation of traits among individuals within species also plays an important role in species coexistence and distribution. Taking the desert plant community of Ebinur Lake as the research object, five plant functional characteristics were measured in 13 plants of 25 quadrats in the study area. The changes of these five functional characteristics by the method of character gradient analysis and the scale variation of plant functional traits and the correlation between their environments were studied. The results showed that: (1) the range of α value of the five plant functional characteristics in the community was larger than that of β value; that is, the change of the character value of a species relative to related symbiotic species was larger than that along the average character gradient of the community. (2) The correlations between leaf thickness and leaf area as well as between leaf thickness and leaf dry matter content were the strongest with correlation coefficients. That is, the correlations between LTH and SLA as well as between LTH and LDMC were stronger than that between the two species in the community, suggesting that the development of succession had no significant effect. The strategies used by dominant species to adapt to the environment changed from high-speed growth to improving resource utilization efficiency, while the coexisting species in the same community adopted different character combinations to adapt to the common community environment.