3.4 Environmental and spatial effects on functional traits and phylogenetic compositions
The results of variation partitioning showed that the pure spatial factors (C) explained a higher variation in each functional trait at community-level than pure environmental factors (A), except for LPc and LN:LPc (Fig. 4). Environmental and spatial factors comprehensively accounted for 63.38% of the total variation in all community-level functional traits and 47.96% of the phylogenetic structures. Meanwhile, the contribution of the pure environment and the combined effect of environment and space (B) to the phylogenetic structure were both significantly higher than those of the community-level functional traits. However, for each community-level trait, pure spatial variables explained 52.06%, 41.56%, and 37.07% variations of the LDMCc, SLAc, and LCc, respectively. The pure environment could explain 18.48% of the variation in LNc at most, whereas it showed no influence on LCc, LN:LPc, and LC:LNc. The combined effect of environment and space on LTc was the highest (13.75%), but it had no effect on LCc and LNc (Fig. 4).