Soil biodiversity plays a critical role in supporting multiple ecosystem functions. As some of the most diverse and abundant metazoans on the Earth, soil nematode communities exhibit changes along environmental gradients, but the ways in which the ab...
The elevational divergence of plant CSR (Competitor–Stress-Tolerator–Ruderal) strategies represents a core theme in global change ecology, yet adaptive patterns across subalpine transition zones remain insufficiently understood. This stud...
The interaction between environmental variables influences patterns of diversity and the composition of communities along the elevational gradient. However, there is a lack of evidence regarding how these diversity patterns in Scolytinae change in re...
Elevation gradients offer excellent opportunities to explore the climate sensitivity of vegetation. Here, we investigated elevation patterns of structural, chemical, and physiological traits in tropical tree species along a 1700–2700 m elevatio...
Elevation gradients strongly influence the diversity pattern of soil microorganisms. To date, many studies have elucidated the response of soil microbes to changes in elevation gradients. However, the effects of these gradients on the assembly mechan...
Carbon (C) losses due to the conversion of natural forests adversely affect the biotic and abiotic components of terrestrial ecosystems. In tropical China, rubber cultivation often extends from its traditional range to elevations of up to 1400 m. How...
On tropical mountains, predation pressure decreases with elevation. Accordingly, one expects an elevational decay in the prevalence of costly defensive traits such as aposematic coloration. Using light-trap catches of Arctiinae moths (353 species, 44...
Non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) are important components of plant photosynthetic carbon products and play key roles in carbon allocation and stress adaptation. We hypothesized that elevational gradients and organ functional differences jointly sha...
Changes in soil abiotic and biotic properties can be powerful drivers of feedback between plants and soil microbial communities. However, the specific mechanisms by which seasonal changes in environmental factors shape soil microbial communities are...
As the most important way to mitigate climate change, forest carbon storage has been the subject of extensive research. A comprehensive study was carried out to investigate the influence of elevation gradients and diameter classes on the forest growt...
Elevational variation in avian community composition can be significantly influenced by habitat degradation, fragmentation and secondary forest growth. Few studies have identified the drivers of changes in bird community composition across disturbed...
(1) Studying changes in plant composition and diversity of Pinus pumila communities along the elevation is significant for biodiversity conservation; (2) In this study, we systematically analysed Pinus pumila communities’ species composition an...
The complexity of forest ecosystems leads to differences in the distribution patterns of different vegetation types along elevation gradients. This study aimed to explore the characteristics of AGB variations along elevation gradients for different f...
The Three-River Source Region (TRSR) is vital to the ecological security of China. However, the impact of global warming on the dynamics of vegetation along the elevation gradient in the TRSR remains unclear. Accordingly, we used multi-source remote...
In forest ecosystems, elevation gradient is one of the most influential factors on soil characteristics, vegetation types, and soil microorganisms. However, it remains unclear how the elevation gradient and the soil environment under its influence af...
Examining the changes in woody plant structural diversity along an inverse elevation-dependent warming gradient will enhance our mechanistic understanding of how warming affects forest communities because such an inverse elevational gradient reflects...
Tropical forests play an important role in regulating the global climate and the carbon cycle. With the changing temperature and moisture along the elevation gradient, the Luquillo Experimental Forest in Northeastern Puerto Rico provides a natural ap...
We examined the distribution of termites along an elevational gradient in the western Rif Mountains of northern Morocco. Sampling followed standardized protocols at nine forest sites (125, 325, 488, 715, 850, 1150, 1316, 1544, and 1700 masl), all exc...
Little is known about how differences in water availability within the “super humid” tropics can influence the physiology of understory plant species and the composition of understory plant communities. We investigated the variation in th...
Species traits often vary in a coordinated manner, making up an ecological strategy comprised of suites of interrelated traits. Environmental gradients, such as those along elevational gradients, provide an ideal venue in which to examine variation i...
The distribution of birds in the tropical mountains is important not only for testing fundamental scientific hypotheses, but also for bird conservation. In order to obtain knowledge on bird community structure within the tropical highland ecosystem,...
A better understanding of the response of plant growth to elevational gradients may shed light on how plants respond to environmental variation and on the physiological mechanisms underlying these responses. This study analyzed whole plant growth and...
Revealing the assembly mechanisms of the soil microbial community, which is crucial to comprehend microbial biodiversity, is a central focus in ecology. The distribution patterns of microbial elevational diversity have been extensively studied, but t...
Eisenia nordenskioldi is the dominant earthworm species in many tundra and boreal habitats. Nothing is known about the genetic diversity of this species along the elevation gradient in China. This study sampled 28 individuals in the E. nordenskioldi...
Vegetation water-use efficiency (WUE), which represents the trade-off between carbon assimilation and water consumption, is a key indicator of ecosystem adaptation to environmental change. While previous studies have addressed the climatic controls o...
Climate change is altering the abundance and distributions of natural communities in mountainous ecosystems, but the variations of soil microbial communities and their driving factors along elevation gradients at high altitudinal mid-subtropical zone...
This study aimed to investigate the accumulation of aboveground biomass, organ allocation patterns, and their driving mechanisms in Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) forests along different elevational gradients and to compare regional differences i...
The distribution of the soil aggregate structure and its associated organic carbon along the elevation gradient remains unclear, but it may be crucial for the stabilization of soil carbon pools in mountainous forests. In this study, we first assessed...
Elevation is a strong proxy for the thermal environment because it causes a predictable drop in temperature and food availability. This restricts cave-dwelling bats to species with specific metabolic traits, such as torpor or migration to avoid cold...
Mountain regions are vulnerable to climate change but information about the climate sensitivity of seasonally snow-covered, subalpine ecosystems is still lacking. We investigated the impact of climatic conditions and pedogenesis on the C and N cyclin...
Progress in understanding changes in soil biology in response to latitude, elevation and disturbance gradients has generally lagged behind studies of above-ground plants and animals owing to methodological constraints and high diversity and complexit...
Studying the response of plant leaf functional traits to elevation helps us understand plant adaptation to the environment and their distribution trends under global climate change. Currently, how plant leaf functional traits respond to elevation acr...
Mt Etna in Sicily hosts a bryophyte floristic richness of 306 taxa, corresponding to 259 mosses, 43 liverworts, and 4 hornworts. Species richness shows a hump-shaped relationship with the elevation, with a peak at 1200–1700 m a.s.l. Chorotype p...
Vegetation–hydrothermal trend patterns in semiarid mountains are inherently multidimensional across altitudinal gradients, requiring probabilistic frameworks to characterize overlapping vegetation–hydrothermal trend patterns. We develop a...
Vegetation in arid central Asia (ACA) has been experiencing significant changes due to substantial warming and humidification since the 1980s. These changes are inhomogeneous due to the ecological vulnerability and topographic complexity of ACA. Howe...
The structural patterns comprising bimodal pollination networks can help characterize plant–pollinator systems and the interactions that influence species distribution and diversity over time and space. We compare network organization of three...
Explaining community assembly mechanisms along elevational gradients dominated by deterministic processes or stochastic processes is a pressing challenge. Many studies suggest that phylogenetic and functional diversity are significant indicators of t...
Understanding the pattern of species distribution and the underlying mechanism is essential for conservation planning. Several climatic variables determine the species diversity, and the dependency of species on climate motivates ecologists and bio-g...
Highlights: European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) and silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) displayed parabolic elevational trends of the cessation of xylem cell differentiation phases. Xylem phenology and growth rates of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) appea...
Quantitative classification and ordination are instrumental in improving our understanding of plant community patterns and facilitating effective conservation efforts in national mountain ecosystems worldwide. However, there has been a lack of releva...
The two subfamilies Hemerodromiinae and Clinocerinae, also known as aquatic dance flies, are a group of small predatory insects occurring mainly in mountainous areas and the northern temperate. However, very little is known about distribution pattern...
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are considered crucial for the survival of many endangered plant species. However, the dynamics of AMF communities in the roots and rhizosphere soil of Heptacodium miconioides, particularly along elevation gradients...
Knowledge of intra-annual stem growth dynamics across environmental gradients is important for advancing our ability to understand the adaptability and vulnerability of subtropical tree species to future climate change. To assess the effects of seaso...
Mountain forests are critical for carbon sequestration, yet the effects of rapid warming on tree growth and climate sensitivity across elevational gradients remain poorly understood. Here, we focus on the largest mountain coniferous forests in southw...
In this study, we focused on the bedrock-dependent effects of climate change on terricolous lichen communities along elevational gradients in the Alps. In particular, we contrasted between carbonatic and siliceous bedrock, hypothesizing more favourab...
Active soil substances, which can indicate environmental changes sensitively, have the fastest turnover rate. Vegetation diversity and soil bio-physicochemical properties according to five elevations classes (800 m, 1000 m, 1100 m, 1200 m, and 1500 m...
Alpine dwarf pine populations are dwelling in a climate-sensitive habitat, where detection of the carbon (C) cycle is still valued for sustainability. Foliar and soil parameters are key factors that combine to jointly affect aboveground C storage in...
Potentilla erecta (L.) Raeusch. is a widely used medicinal species valued for its astringent, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial effects. This study examined the variation in hydrolysable tannin and flavonoid content in rhizomes of wild-growing pop...
The southern slopes of the Bolkar Mountains, in the western Bolkar massif of the central Taurus range, compress the full sequence of eastern Mediterranean vegetation zones into a short horizontal distance, yet their butterfly fauna has never been sur...
New Guinea, the world’s largest tropical island, supports the planet’s richest insular avifauna. Large areas of New Guinea remain poorly surveyed, however, in part due to the island’s challenging terrain. In hard-to-access areas, li...
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