Distribution Of Clonal Plants And Relation Of Their Importance To Environment Factors And Species Diversity

1860 sample data on vegetation of China were calculated and analysed. We investigated the relations of the distribution of clonal plants and their importance to the environment factors and species diversity. Clonal plants present in different ecosystems and take important role in most of the ecosystems. Clonal plants possess stronger adaptabilities to stressful habitats than that of non-clonal plants. Clonal plants were more abundant in colder and drier and lower soil nitrogen content habitats corresponding to higher latitude and/or higher elevation. Clonal plants were more common in alpine meadow,tundra and alpine gravel vegetation than that of non-clonal plants. The occurrence of clonal plants with different clonal growth forms differs markedly among plant communities. Of all the clonal plants,root-derived forms of clonal plants are more abundance in warmer and wetter habitats corresponding to preference for a lower latitude and/or lower elevation. On the contrary,stem-derived forms of clonal plants more frequently occur in colder and drier habitats corresponding to higher latitude and/or higher elevation. Individual types of clonal growth with sprouting are more frequent in warmer and wetter habitats,such as shrub forest,broad-leaves forest and bamboo forest. Individual types of clonal growth with rhizome are more frequent in colder and drier habitats,such as alpine shrub forest,grassland and desert steppe. Stoloniferous types are more abundant in warmer and moister habitats,such as meadow. Plants with different clonal architectures have different adaptabilities to environment stress. Phalanx clonal plants possess stronger adaptation to stressful conditions. On the contrary,guerilla clonal plants seem to preference for warmer and wetter habitats such as swamp and meadow.In plant-spare habitats,Shannon-Wiener index increases with increasing importance of phalanx and guerilla clonal plants respectively. In plant-dense habitats,phalanx species with higher ramet density may prevent establishment of other species by seedling and/or vegetative propagules. In a community,the occurrence of monodominant patches of clonal species may lead to a lower species diversity. After penetrating plant-dense habitats,plants with "guerilla" strategies may rapidly colonize available space and compete for resources by strong vegetative spreading ability. So that many of the other plant species may be out-competed,resulting in a marked poverty of this species-rich community. The relation of (he diversity to clonality was determined by conal architecture,control mechanism among ramets and habitatconditions. In general,the relation between Shannon-Wiener index and importance of clonal plants was positive in plant-spare habitats,but negative in plant-dense habitats.Our results suggest that plants with different clonal architectures have different strategies to adapt to different habitat conditions,as well as have different control mechanism to abate inter-competition,and regulate species diversity. It also strongly suggests a need for manipulative experimental studies of this aspect of regulation of plant species diversity.