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Aim: The equator‐to‐poles decline in the number of species, namely the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG), is the most conspicuous pattern in biology, yet the underlying mechanisms of this pattern remain controversial. Species dispersal could have strong effects on large‐scale species distributions but has rarely been considered in understanding the LDG. Here we sought to examine how dispersal ability may influence the latitudinal phylogenetic patterns of woody angiosperm assemblages. Location: China. Taxon: Woody angiosperms. Methods: Based on a highly supported mega‐phylogeny constructed from plastid genomes, we assessed the patterns of phylogenetic relatedness and dissimilarity of 1184 trees with three different seed dispersal modes (i.e. zoochory, anemochory and autochory) in 12 permanent forest dynamic plots covering tropical, subtropical and temperate zones in China. Results: We found that, compared with zoochorous and anemochorous species, the less vagile autochorous trees exhibited a much weaker latitudinal pattern in phylogenetic relatedness and higher phylogenetic dissimilarity among plots. The phylogenetic dissimilarity pattern of autochorous trees was explained more by geographic distance than environmental factors, consistent with a dominant role for dispersal limitation. Main Conclusions: Our study, for the first time, demonstrates that seed dispersal mode strongly influences the latitudinal phylogenetic patterns of woody angiosperm assemblages in China and highlights the importance of interaction between dispersal limitation and environmental filtering in determining the large‐scale distribution of forest biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Phylogenetic trees have been extensively used in community ecology. However, how the phylogeny construction affects ecological inferences is poorly understood. In this study, we constructed three different types of phylogenetic trees (a synthetic‐tree generated using V.PhyloMaker, a barcode‐tree generated using rbcL+matK+trnH‐psbA, and a plastome‐tree generated from plastid genomes) that represented an increasing level of phylogenetic resolution among 580 woody plant species from six forest dynamic plots in subtropical evergreen broadleaved forests of China. We then evaluated the performance of each phylogeny in estimations of community phylogenetic structure, turnover and phylogenetic signal in functional traits. As expected, the plastome‐tree was most resolved and most supported for relationships among species. For local phylogenetic structure, the three trees showed consistent results with Faith's PD and MPD; however, only the synthetic‐tree produced significant clustering patterns using MNTD for some plots. For phylogenetic turnover, contrasting results between the molecular trees and the synthetic‐tree occurred only with nearest neighbor distance. The barcode‐tree agreed more with the plastome‐tree than the synthetic‐tree for both phylogenetic structure and turnover. For functional traits, both the barcode‐tree and plastome‐tree detected phylogenetic signal in maximum height, but only the plastome‐tree detected signal in leaf width. This is the first study that uses plastid genomes in large‐scale community phylogenetics. Our results highlight the improvement of plastome‐trees over barcode‐trees and synthetic‐trees for the analyses studied here. Our results also point to the possibility of type I and II errors in estimation of phylogenetic structure and turnover and detection of phylogenetic signal when using synthetic‐trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elucidating interactions of above-ground and below-ground communities in different habitat types is essential for understanding biodiversity maintenance and ecosystem functioning., Using 454 pyrosequencing of ITS2 sequences we examined the relationship between subtropical mountain forest soil fungal communities, abiotic conditions, and plant communities using correlation and partial models., Ridge and valley habitats with differing fungal communities were delineated. Total, saprotrophic and pathogenic fungal richness were significantly correlated with plant species richness and/or soil nutrients and moisture in the ridge habitat, but with habitat convexity or basal area of Castanopsis eyrei in the valley habitat. Ectomycorrhizal ( EM) fungal richness was significantly correlated with basal area of C. eyrei and total EM plants in the ridge and valley habitats, respectively. Total, saprotrophic, pathogenic and EM fungal compositions were significantly correlated with plant species composition and geographic distance in the ridge habitat, but with various combinations of plant species composition, plant species richness, soil C : N ratio and pH or no variables in the valley habitat., Our findings suggest that mechanisms influencing soil fungal diversity and community composition differ between ridge and valley habitats, and relationships between fungal and woody plant assemblages depend on habitat types in the subtropical forest ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring the relationships between the biodiversity of groups of interacting organisms yields insight into ecosystem stability and function (Hooper et al. ; Wardle ). We demonstrated positive relationships between host plant richness and ectomycorrhizal ( EM) fungal diversity both in a field study in subtropical China (Gutianshan) and in a meta-analysis of temperate and tropical studies (Gao et al. ). However, based on re-evaluation of our data sets, Tedersoo et al. () argue that the observed positive correlation between EM fungal richness and EM plant richness at Gutianshan and also in our metastudies was based mainly from (i) a sampling design with inconsistent species pool and (ii) poor data compilation for the meta-analysis. Accordingly, we checked our data sets and repeated the analysis performed by Tedersoo et al. (). In contrast to Tedersoo et al. (), our re-analysis still confirms a positive effect of plant richness on EM fungal diversity in Gutianshan, temperate and tropical ecosystems, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Xiaolong Mountain, located in warm temperate subtropical transition zone, is one of the important biodiversity conservation areas in China. We analyzed species composition, community structure, and habitat preferences of all woody plant species with DBH (diameter at breast height)≥1 cm in a 6 hm 2 plot in Xiaolong Mountain, Gansu Province, Northwest China. A total of 29251 individuals (41735 stems) belonging to 33 families, 65 genera, and 124 species were recorded. The 28 species with importance value ≥1 contributed 82.9% to the total abundance. The top four species with the highest importance value were Quercus aliena var. acuteserrata , Betula platyphylla , Lindera aggregata var. playfairii and Corylus heterophylla . The structure of DBH size class of all stems showed an inverse 'J' type, indicating a successful regeneration tendency in the understory. Results from the indicator species analysis showed that 11 species had significant habitat prefe-rences, an two species ( Ostrya japonica and Acer stachyophyllum subsp. betulifolium ) had the most obvious preferences. Results from the redundancy analysis and partial methods showed that topographic factors played a dominant role in determining species distribution.