Niche characteristic of herbages in artificial sandfixing communities in Horqin sandy land

By using Levins index of niche breadth and Pianka index of niche overlap, the niche characteristics of herbaceous species on mobile sand dune and in different artificial sandfixing communities were studied. The results showed that the niche breadth of species varied in different habitats, Agriophyllum squarrosum, Setaria viridis and Digitaria ciliaris had the widest niche breadth on mobile sand dune and in Hedysarum fruticosum community and Salix gordejevii community respectively, while the niche breadth of Corispermum candelabrum was the widest in Caragana korshinshii community and C. microphylla community. The species with wide niche breadth had large niche overlap in each community, but there were also large niche overlap between the species with low niche breadth, which showed from another point of view that environment and resources had high spatial heterogeneity in different sandfixing communities. The difference of niche breadth and niche overlap of the same species in different communities showed that the feature of regional environment among the communities was different.