Inter-specific association of dominant species in Baihua Mountain meadow of Beijing

In order to clarify the species composition and inter-specific association of the meadow community in the Baihua Mountain of Beijing based on the investigation of the meadow,a series of techniques,including the analysis of variance,χ²-test,Ochiai's coefficient(OI), Dice's coefficient(DI) and Jaccard's coefficient(JI),were used to analyze the association of the species in the meadow.There were 92 vascular bundte species in the meadow,belonging to 26 families,66 genera.Of these there were 28 dominant species such as Sanguisorba officinalis,Iris ruthenica var.nana and Carex lanceolata.The overall correlation of all species was negative,but not significant.There were 378 species-pairs,which were composed by 28 dominant species and checked by χ²-test.Among these,the inter-specific association of 80 species-pairs were significant or very significant.Of these,55 species-pairs revealed a significant negative correlation,accounting for 14.55% of all species-pairs and 68.75% of the species-pairs with a significant correlation.While 25 species-pairs showed a significant positive correlation,accounting for 6.61% of all species-pairs and 31.25% of the species-pairs with a significant correlation.The indices of OI,DI and JI,which are used to show the inter-specific association,all have high similarity,and any of them can be used independently to evaluate the inter-specific association.