3.4 Plant species dominance
Warming significantly decreased plant community evenness, but warming
had differential impacts on species dominance (Fig. 4, and Tables S4 and
S5). The RDA analysis with treatment and environmental variables
accounted for 41% of the variation in species dominance (Fig. S5). In
general, species with a greater extension in growing season length and
flower duration tended to increase their dominance (Fig. 5). The
positive relations were also observed between warming-induced shifts in
last flower and leaf senescence dates and warming-induced changes in
species dominance (Fig. 5). Specifically, warming-induced changes in
last flower, leaf senescence, flower duration and growing season length
explained 16, 8, 27 and 22% variance of warming-induced changes in
species dominance, respectively. By contrast, there was no relation
between warming-induced changes in leaf out and first flower dates and
warming-induced changes in species dominance (Fig. S6).