Testing the Functional and Phylogenetic Assembly of Plant Communities in Gobi Deserts of Northern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

The mechanism governing plant community assembly across large-scale Gobi deserts remains unclear. Here, we inferred the roles of different assembly processes in structuring plant communities in the Gobi deserts of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau by using a phylogenetic tree, and leaf and root traits. The functional and phylogenetic structures of 183 plant communities were assessed, and their distributions were linked with environmental gradients. Our results demonstrated that functional convergence was prevalent in most functional traits (75% of the traits) and accentuated when all traits were combined. The phylogenetic structure exhibited significant divergence. We observed the contrasting response of functional and phylogenetic assembly structures to environmental gradients. More importantly, we found that the shifts in the functional assembly along environmental gradients were trait-specific, with dominant roles of local factors, such as gravel coverage and soil attributes, in determining the distribution patterns of most traits. However, the distribution patterns of leaf P concentration (LPC), root N concentration (RNC), and root P concentration (RPC) were mainly driven by climatic factors. These results reveal that niche-based processes, such as abiotic filtering and weaker competitive exclusion, are the major drivers of species co-occurrence, which results in the widespread coexistence of phylogenetically distinct but functionally similar species within the Gobi plant community. Our findings could improve the understanding of plant community assembly processes and biodiversity maintenance in extremely harsh drylands.