Influence of Aboveground Vegetation on Seed Bank Composition and Distribution in a Great Basin Desert Sagebrush Community

摘要: Abstract The quantity, composition, and spatial dispersion of seed banks can greatly affect community dynamics. While hot deserts have been studied extensively, little is known about in cold deserts, particular the relationship between bank aboveground vegetation. We investigated vegetation effect microhabitat (shrub interspace or beneath shrub) phase (high low perennial bunchgrass cover) on a Great Basin Desert sagebrush community. differed their most dominant species, resulting moderately dissimilar species compositions as determined by Sorensen's similarity index Bray–Curtis distance. In contrast, comparing composition to structure (functional groups) using non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) revealed correspondence two communities. Shrub densities were higher shrubs. Neither nor explained variation total density richness. Therefore, our measures did not influence across functional groups richness, varied depending organizational level used comparisons.