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β-diversity in temperate grasslands is driven by stronger environmental filtering of plant species with large genomes
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  • Hai-Yang Zhang,
  • Xiaotao Lü,
  • cunzheng wei,
  • Jeff Powell,
  • Xiaobo Wang,
  • Dingliang Xing,
  • Xing-Guo Han
Hai-Yang Zhang
Western Sydney University Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Xiaotao Lü
Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
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cunzheng wei
Institute of Botany Chinese Academy of Sciences
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Jeff Powell
Hawkesbury Institute for the Environnment
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Xiaobo Wang
Lanzhou University College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology
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Dingliang Xing
School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences, East China Normal University
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Xing-Guo Han
State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change
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Abstract

Elucidating mechanisms underlying community assembly and biodiversity patterns is central to ecology and evolution. Genome size (GS, i.e. nuclear DNA content) determines species’ capacity to tolerate environmental stress and therefore potentially drives community assembly. However, its role in driving β-diversity (i.e., spatial variability in species composition) remains unclear. We measured GS for 161 plant species and investigated their occurrences within plant communities across 52 sites spanning a 3200-km transect in the temperate grasslands of China. Using species distribution modelling, we found that environmental factors showed larger effects on β-diversity of large-GS than that of small-GS species and that communities with abundant resources had a greater representation of large-GS species. The latter finding was confirmed following analysis of data from a 10-yr resource (water, nitrogen, and phosphorus) manipulation experiment in which resource addition resulted in increased community weighted GS based on plant biomass estimates, suggesting that large-GS species are more sensitive to environmental resource limitation and explaining the greater environmental selection on β-diversity of large-GS species. These findings highlight the roles of GS in driving community assembly and predicting species responses to global change.