Urban expansion often accompanies a loss of natural habitats and arable lands but an increase in urban population. In China, vegetable-dominant small farmlands are common urban/peri-urban areas. Some also associated with government policy that aims to enhance local farmers’ livelihoods as well food availability for city citizens. While create open greenery cover may provide birds resources such...

Afforestation plays an important role in controlling soil erosion and nutrient loss on the Loess Plateau China. However, previous studies changes have mainly focused effects of tree species, whereas little is known about how shrubs herbs caused by afforestation drive changes. In this study, we examined variation characteristics understory vegetation nutrients for different types. The results sh...

We investigated changes in species richness, community biomass, and productivity during secondary forest succession in Ziwuling area of the Loess Plateau of China. Species richness(number of taxa) increased as the succession proceeds, and peaked at the climax forest community, but the richness growth gradually slowed down as the succession advanced. Community biomass rapidly increased from the ...

we investigated the relations among infection intensity of european mistletoe (viscum album l.) with host tree features in nour forest park, located in caspian forests in north of iran. the number of 30 circular plots with an area of 0.1 ha were sampled in all places have an aggregation of infested trees. parameters including dbh, height, distance to stand edge, distance to conspecific tree, ba...

a field survey was conducted in wukari, taraba state to assess the diversity and abundance of insect species in selected habitats (residential, open field made up of grassland and an agroecosystem). sampling were done biweekly using light, pitfall and yellow pan traps set in 3 replicates, 30 m apart. insects recovered were wet preserved in 70% ethanol except butterflies and moths. representativ...

Although overstory trees limit the abundance and species richness of herbaceous vegetation in longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) plantations, the responsible mechanisms are poorly understood because of confounding among limiting factors. In fall 1998, research was initiated to determine the separate effects of aboveand belowground competition and needlefall from overstory pines on understory...

Fisher's logseries is widely used to characterize species abundance pattern, and some previous studies used it to predict species richness. However, this model, derived from the negative binomial model, degenerates at the zero-abundance point (i.e., its probability mass fully concentrates at zero abundance, leading to an odd situation that no species can occur in the studied sample). Moreover, ...

How many tropical tree species are there in the world? Slik et al. (1) address this question in an elegant way, but this question is far harder than one might initially suppose. Significant uncertainties still remain, which I attribute in large part to an unsolved conundrum that I call “Fisher’s paradox.” Except for a few charismatic groups of organisms such as birds and butterflies, ecologists...