Environmental Adaptation Of Plants And Their Community Building Mechanisms In Lakeshore Wetlands On The Inner Mongolia Plateau Based On Plant Functional Traits

The degradation rate of lakeshore zones has been significantly accelerated by human activities and climate change.Based on the functional traits of lakeshore zone wetland plants can help to understand the adaptive mechanisms exhibited by degraded lakeshore zone wetland plants in response to environmental changes,which is important for the restoration and reconstruction of degraded lakeshore wetland ecosystem.In this paper,the leaves and roots of seven dominant wetlands plants,Phragmites australis,Leymus secalinus,Ranunculus japonicus,Potentilla anserina,Suaeda glauca,Salicornia europaea and Calamagrostis epigeios,were selected in the different typical lakeshore wetlands on the Inner Mongolia Plateau.To investigate the differences in species distribution and functional traits of wetland plants in the lakeshore zone under the influence of environmental changes,and the adaptation strategies of wetland plants in different lakeshore zone wetland habitats.Based on the assessment of interspecific and intraspecific variation in plant functional trait,how the environmental factors shaped on plant functional traits was analyzed using RLQ combined with Fourth-Corner analysis.We also constructed a phylogenetic tree based on the lakeshore zone wetlands in Inner Mongolia,calculated the kinship index to quantify and describe the community phylogenetic structure,and Blomberg's K-value method was used to examine the phylogenetic signals of functional traits and to investigate the mechanisms of plant community construction in the lakeshore zone of the Inner Mongolia Plateau by combining phylogenetic structure and phylogenetic signals of functional traits.The main findings obtained in the paper are as follows:(1)The plant height,leaf carbon concentration,leaf nitrogen concentration,leaf carbon to nitrogen ratio,specific root length,root tissue density and root nitrogen concentration of plants in the lakeshore zone wetlands of Inner Mongolia were sensitive to environmental changes in response to the seven dominant plant species in order to adapt to different environmental influences.(2)Soil factors of plants in lakeshore zone wetlands differed,and soil p H,soil salinity,soil nitrogen concentration,soil carbon to nitrogen ratio and soil conductivity were found to be the main environmental factors causing the differences in functional traits of plants in lakeshore zone wetlands,and the study also revealed the adaptation strategies of different plants in lakeshore zone wetlands to cope with environmental changes.(3)By combining the phylogenetic structure and phylogenetic signals of functional traits,we found that the phylogenetic structure of most of the lakeshore zone communities in the four lakes in the arid and semiarid region of Inner Mongolia is divergent,and the phylogenetic signals of functional traits show trait convergence,so environmental filtering plays an important role in the community construction process at the local spatial scale,while the common evolutionary history plays a relatively small role.The results of the paper will help to understand the species coexistence and species diversity maintenance mechanisms of wetland plant communities along the lakeshores in the arid-semi-arid region of Inner Mongolia,and provide a scientific basis for the restoration and reconstruction of degraded lakeshore wetland ecosystems.