Ecological Species Groups and Interspecific Association of Dominant Tree Species in Daiyun Mountain National Nature Reserve

Abstract： Research on the ecological species groups and interspecific association of plant species are helpful to discover species coexistence processes and mechanisms, and to more fully understand plant community structure, function, and its taxonomy. However, little is known about the ecological species groups （ESG） and the interspecific association of dominant species in Daiyun Mountain National Nature Reserve of Fujian Province, China. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to explore the ESG using maximal tree, and to analyze interspecific associations of 32 dominant species selected from lo2 sample plots using the chi-square test. The results show that： （1） 32 dominant species have a significant overall positive interspecific association, which indicates that the natural forest in Daiyun Mountain National Nature Reserve is stable, （a） The species pairs with weak associations, non-associations and positive associations account for lo.88%, 29.64% and 59.48% of the total 496 species pairs respectively, which suggests that the population distributions of the dominant species investigated are relatively independent, （3） The following species pairs may be useful for practical application, 〈Pinus taiwanensis, Rhododendron farrerae〉, 〈Castanopsis carlesii, Altingia chinensis〉, 〈C. carlesii, Castanopsis fargesii〉, 〈Castanopsis eyrei, C. fargesii〉, 〈P. taiwanensis, Fagus lucida〉 , 〈Machilus thunbergii, Castanopsis nigrescens〉, and （4） The results of clustering analysis based on the maximal tree method indicates that the 32 dominant species can be divided into 3 ESGs when A at o.6o, that is ESG I {Pinus massoniana, Cunning hamia lanceolata}, ESG II {P. taiwanensis, R. farrerae, Enkianthus quinqueflorus}, ESG III {C. carlesii, A. chinensis, C. eyrei, Castanopsis fabri, C. fargesii, Schima superba, Machilus thunbergii, Rhododendron latoueheae}. The results may be used for the selection of afforestation tree species in South China Forest Areas and guide the natural management of plantations.

Response of Pinus taiwanensis growth to climate changes at its southern limit of Daiyun Mountain, China's Mainland Fujian Province

The Pinus taiwanensis trees of a Chinese endemic species form pure forests at infertile sites in humid subtropical China, which can aid soil reservation and ecological resiliency at such sites. Herein, we used dendrochronological methods to investigate the growth patterns and their relationship with climate by analyzing 158 cores of 79 P. taiwanensis trees at 4 sites in their southernmost distribution in China's Mainland at Daiyun Mountain in Fujian Province. Tree growths at sites with favor- able conditions generally showed an age-related growth trend, which decreased from approximately 5 mm to 0.5 mm in about a century. Trees in moderately stressed environments established high growth in their juvenile periods but were highly suscep- tible to environmental stresses such as a sharp growth decline in the 1990s. The temperature in February and the moisture in July are the major limiting factors for most of the tree growths, except for a few extremely stressed P. taiwanensis trees. The growth of the dwarf P. taiwanensis trees, with all ring diameters of the first 20 years less than 4 ram, is mainly limited by the dry climate in May. Under the potential future warming trend, drought stress can be particularly threatening to these dwarf P. taiwanensis trees, which are likely to be the germplasm resources for this species in this region.