Estimating non-native plant richness with a species-accumulation model along roads |
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Authors: | Huixuan Liao Huijie Wang Qiaohong Dong Feihong Cheng Ting Zhou Shaolin Peng |
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Institution: | 1. State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275 China;2. State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275 China
These authors contributed equally to this research. |
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Abstract: | Monitoring non-native plant richness is important for biodiversity conservation and scientific research. The species-area model (SA model) has been used frequently to estimate the total species richness within a region. However, the conventional SA model may not provide robust estimations of non-native plant richness because the ecological processes associated with the accumulation of exotic and native plants may differ. Because roads strongly dictate the distributions of exotic plants, we propose a species-accumulation model along roads (SR model), rather than an SA model, to estimate the non-native plant richness within a region. Using 270 simulated data sets, we compared the differences in performance between the SR and SA models. A decision tree based on prediction accuracy was created to guide model application, which was validated using field data from 3 national nature reserves in 3 different provinces in China. The SR model significantly outperformed the SA model when non-native species were restricted to the roadsides and the proportion of uncommon exotic species was small. More importantly, the SR model accurately estimated the non-native plant richness in all field sites with an error of <1 species per site. We believe our new model meets the practical need to efficiently and robustly estimate non-native plant richness, which may facilitate effective biodiversity conservations and promote research on non-native plant invasion and vegetation dynamics. |
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Keywords: | biodiversity conservation estimation non-native plant richness road species–area relationship undersampling conservación de la biodiversidad carretera estimación planta no nativa relación especie-área riqueza submuestreo 低估 丰富度 生物多样性保护 外来植物 种-面积模型 种-道路长度模型 |
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