Diversity and distribution of succulent plant communities – a process-based modelling perspective

Bjoern Reineking, Universitaet Bayreuth

Understanding the mechanisms that determine the diversity and distribution of communities is a key question in ecology. Here, I use a generic process-based model to investigate how local scale environmental variability affects the diversity of plant communities, and to which extent environmental conditions explain the geographical distribution of succulents in South Africa.

The model is based on selected ecophysiological processes. For individual plants, the model calculates water uptake and transpiration, carbon assimilation and respiration on a daily basis. The water and carbon cycles are coupled via a plant’s water use efficiency. Plant species differ in their allocation strategies, i.e. the way plants invest carbon in different compartments like roots, leaves and storage. All model parameter values were specified with independent literature data.