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Native plantations foster phylogenetic cohesion while nonnative plantations promote higher species turnover in understory vegetation in subtropical managed forest.

Shoaib Ilyas,Sehrish Sadia,Mr Nadeem,Abeer Al-Andal,Asma Jabeen,Fahim Arshad,Sanaullah Sattar,Zarafshan Abbas,Muhammad Waheed

Published 2025 in Journal of Environmental Management

ABSTRACT

Understory plant communities are critical components of forest ecosystems, contributing to biodiversity, nutrient cycling, and ecological resilience. In subtropical landscapes, these communities are increasingly shaped by afforestation practices, yet the influence of plantation origin on their structure remains insufficiently understood. Despite the expansion of native and nonnative plantations across subtropical regions, their comparative impacts on taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity, as well as community composition, have received limited empirical attention. This study aimed to evaluate how plantation nativity influences understory plant diversity, evolutionary structure, and compositional turnover in a subtropical forest landscape. Vegetation surveys were conducted in four mature plantations types, two native (Dalbergia sissoo, Terminalia arjuna) and two nonnatives (Eucalyptus camaldulensis, Populus nigra) with standardized sampling across 40 transects. Diversity metrics were analyzed using a combination of multivariate statistics and phylogenetic tools. Native plantations supported significantly higher species richness and phylogenetic diversity compared to nonnative stands. Shannon diversity was also greater in native systems, whereas nonnative plantations exhibited higher evenness but lower species abundance complexity. Phylogenetic trees showed greater evolutionary dispersion in native understories, reflecting broader ecological interactions. Species turnover was substantially elevated in nonnative plantations, indicating unstable and dissimilar communities across sites. In contrast, native plantations demonstrated compositional cohesion and reduced beta diversity. Rank-abundance distributions in native stands followed lognormal models, suggestive of structurally mature and competitively balanced assemblages. Nonnative plantations, especially Eucalyptus, displayed truncated distributions dominated by a few generalist species, reflecting environmental filtering and competitive exclusion. These findings emphasize the ecological advantages of native plantations in maintaining diverse and evolutionarily rich understory communities. Incorporating native species into forest management strategies can enhance long-term biodiversity conservation and ecosystem function in subtropical afforestation programs.

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