Spatially structured environmental variation plays a prominent role on the biodiversity of freshwater macrophytes across China

Abstract

Different non-mutually exclusive mechanisms interactively shape large-scale diversity patterns. However, our understanding of multi-faceted diversity and their determinants in aquatic ecosystems is far from complete compared to terrestrial ones. Here, we use variation partitioning based on redundancy analysis to analyze the relative contribution of environmental and spatial variables to the patterns of phylogenetic, taxonomic, and functional diversity in macrophyte assemblages across 214 Chinese watersheds. We found extremely high spatial congruence among most aspects of biodiversity, with some important exceptions. We then used variation partitioning to estimate the proportions of variation in macrophyte biodiversity explained by environmental and spatial variables. All diversity facets were optimally explained by spatially structured environmental variables, not the pure environment effect, implying that macrophyte are taxonomically, phylogenetically, and functionally clustered in space, which might be the result of the interaction of environmental and/or evolutionary drives. We demonstrate that macrophytes might face extensive dispersal limitations across watersheds such as topography and habitat fragmentation and availability.