A regional montane reserve system should cover the entire elevational gradient and multiple slopes, rather than only the montane crest, suggested WU Fei, a PhD candidate at Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

WU and his supervisors did point counts to sample bird communities in four elevational zones, on eastern and western slopes, during both the breeding and the non-breeding seasons in the Ailao Mountains of central Yunnan Province, China. They used permutation tests and complementary cluster analysis to evaluate the data obtained.

Their results show significantly high levels of beta diversity, which means the rate of change in species composition across habitats or among communities, among elevational zones and between slopes, as well as between seasons for Shannon diversity, in a small area of the Ailao Mountain range. WU concluded from this that people should take account of various elevational gradient and multiple slopes when designing regional montane reserve systems. And the higher pattern diversity in lower elevational zones suggests that larger areas should be preserved at lower elevational zones, said WU.

Montane systems are often recognized as biodiversity hotspots. Data on spatial and temporal turnover in species composition within a region is essential to design regional montane protected areas, but it is rare to find quantitative study on this. Thus WU’s quantitative study of the patterns of montane bird diversity across multiple spatial and temporal scales provides valuable reference for both academic research and design of regional montane reserve systems.

WU’s findings has been published in the journal of Diversity and Distribution. For the abstract of the paper, please visit http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1472-4642.2010.00710.x/full.