Inter-Specific Correlations among Dominant Populations of Woody Syringa reticulata Communities in Wulu Mountain Nature Reserve, Shanxi Province of China
Abstract:We selected 34 dominant species according to frequency and studied interspecific associations and correlations using variance ratio (VR) analysis of the overall association and χ2-test,Pearson correlation coefficient and Spearman rank correlation coefficient based on 2×2 contingency tables of species presence/absence data.No significant negative correlations were observed among the 34 dominant species,which suggested that the forest was not stable.Interspecific correlations among 561species-pairs of the 34 dominant species showed that 216,149 and 206 species-pairs were positively correlated,345,412 and 365 species-pairs were negatively correlated,and the positive and negative correlation ratios were 0.626,0.362 and 0.564, based on χ2-test for 2×2 contingency table.Spearman rank correlation was more sensitive than the Pearson correlation.