LB 9-76 - Past, present and future species richness and beta diversity of Fagaceae in South-western China

Thursday, August 10, 2023

5:00 PM – 6:30 PM PDT

Location: ESA Exhibit Hall

Presenting Author(s)

BP

Bikram Pandey

Lecturer
Uniglobe College
Kathmandu, Bagmati, Nepal

Coauthor(s)

BP

Basu Dev Poudel

Environmental officer
Environmental services Nepal, Nepal
MD

Mohammed Abdullah Dakhil

Post Doctoral Researcher
Northwestern Polytechnical University, Egypt
LZ

Lin Zhang

Associate Professor
Chengdu Institute of Biology, China (People's Republic)
ZL

Ziyan Liao

Post Doctoral Researcher
Chengdu Institute of Biology, China (People's Republic)

Macroecological research aims to understand the driving factors behind the variation in species composition and diversity, but comparatively little effort has been made to clarify the patterns of beta diversity (β-diversity). β-diversity pertains to the dissimilarities in the species assemblages or ecological communities among two or more locations or habitats, and can be used to assess the spatial scaling of biodiversity loss. Therefore, this research is designed to provide insight to past, present and future β-diversity of Fagaceae in Southwestern region of China. Here we computed the past, present and future species richness (α-diversity) of Fagaceae using species distribution model and more than 4000 geographical observations were used to predict the spatial β-diversity pattern of 120 species. The study area was partitioned into 1074 grid cells, each measuring 50km × 50km in size. The total number of species within each grid cell was calculated to determine the species richness (α-diversity), which was subsequently used to compute the β-diversity. Additionally, two components of β-diversity i.e. turnover (βsim) and nestedness (βsne) were also evaluated. We used generalized additive model (GAM) and random forests (RF) modeling to evaluate the effect of response variables (climatic, edaphic and topographic) on β-diversity.According to our findings, it is predicted that the number of Fagaceae species will decrease from 120 to 49 in the future. The α-diversity decreases over time from past to future, the highest number of species in grid cell being 64, 54 and 31, respectively. However, the study predicted that area of species occurrence increased by 94% from present to future, while the increase in β-diversity was 75%. Highest species richness is found in the southern part of the study sites while high β-diversity are found in the central part of the study area. Our research suggests that climatic factors have played a role in the decline of species richness over time, while increase in β-diversity, from the past to the present and potentially into the future. The findings presented here will be crucial in safeguarding regional diversity and can provide direct assistance in conservation planning of Fagaceae.