Community assembly along climatic gradient: Contrasting pattern between- and within- species

Bricca, Alessandro; Musciano, Michele Di; Ferrara, Arianna; Theurillat, Jean‐Paul; Cutini, Maurizio

doi:10.1016/j.ppees.2022.125675

Cited by 17 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…Failure to account for intraspecific variation is one reason why functional trait ecology has fallen short of fulfilling its predictive potential (Shipley et al, 2016; Yang et al, 2020). Indeed, functional traits vary significantly within species (Violle et al, 2012; Siefert et al, 2015; Moran et al, 2016), potentially shifting mean community trait values even if species composition remains unchanged (Pichon et al, 2022; Bricca et al, 2022). The contribution of community composition and intraspecific variation to functional traits of plant communities may also change during the growing season.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimentally induced drought and growing season stage modulate community-level functional traits in a temperate grassland

Fenollosa

Fernandes

Héctor

et al. 2023

Preprint

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1.Extreme precipitation events are expected to become more intense and frequent with climate change. This climatic shift may impact the structure and dynamics of natural communities and the key ecosystem services they provide. Changes in species abundance under these extreme conditions are thought to be driven by functional traits, morpho-physiological characteristics of an organism that impact its fitness. Future environmental conditions may, therefore, favour different functional traits to those in present-day communities. 2. Here, we measure functional traits on 586 vascular plants in a temperate grassland where precipitation has been experimentally manipulated for six years. We calculated community-weighted means of five functional traits (plant height, leaf dry matter content, leaf thickness, specific leaf area, and leaf phosphorus concentration) and compared community-weighted means between three levels of precipitation: drought (-50%), irrigated (+50%), and control. Additionally, we contrasted treatments at two different timings along the growing season: mid-season and late-season. 3. We expected altered community-weighted means for traits associated with a conservative use of water that will result from increased summer stress-induced intraspecific variability in the mid-season and from community composition changes in the late-season, after the field is cut, a common management action across most European grasslands. 4. In the drought treatment, we found significantly lower community-weighted mean plant height and leaf dry matter content. However, we only observed these differences after the mid-season cut. We also observed an increase in leaf phosphorus concentration in the drought treatment before the mid-season cut. A combination of changes in community composition and intraspecific variation contributed to these differences, with community composition being more important after the cut. Species with higher height, leaf dry matter content, and lower leaf thickness showed a more pronounced abundance decline at the drought plots. We observed no changes in functional traits community-weighted means in the irrigated treatment compared to those in control and drought treatments. 5. Synthesis. Our results suggest how the functional trait composition of grassland communities may shift under climate change-induced drought, stressing the interacting effects with growing season stages.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimentally induced drought and growing season stage modulate community-level functional traits in a temperate grassland

Fenollosa

Fernandes

Héctor

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…UV-B radiation and the proportion of frost are also more intense at higher altitudes, so plants need to generate non-photosynthetic protective tissues, which leads to a decrease in SLA (Pescador et al, 2015). There are very few precedents that have found the unimodal trend described here (Biase et al, 2021;Bricca et al, 2022), where the foliar strategies of plants are similar at the two extremes of the environmental gradient (Pérez-Ramos et al, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…In this respect, altitudinal gradients offer a wide range of different environmental conditions in a relatively small space (Körner, 2007), which is why they are commonly used in functional ecology studies (Milla et al, 2009; van de Weg et al, 2009; Schellenberger Costa et al, 2017). However, little research has been carried out in the Mediterranean mountains where high temperatures and low precipitation at low elevations and low temperatures and high irradiance at high elevations offer unique environmental variability and imply the presence of a double stress gradient for vegetation (Biase et al, 2021; Bricca et al, 2022). Assessing the functional response of vegetation to drought in a Mediterranean altitudinal gradient can provide us with relevant information to understand the possible impacts of climate change on the different plant communities characteristic of this climate, but also on multiple ecosystem processes as productivity or nutrient cycling (Diaz & Cabido, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diversity and mean specific leaf area of Mediterranean woody vegetation changes in response to summer drought across a double stress gradient: The role of phenotypic plasticity

Carrascosa

Silvestre²,

Morgado³

et al. 2023

J Vegetation Science

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Aim: Many aspects of vegetation response to increased drought remain uncertain but it is expected that phenotypic plasticity may be key to early adaptation of plants to environmental stress. In this work we observe the response of specific leaf area (SLA) of woody shrub vegetation to the summer drought typical of the Mediterranean climate. In addition, to observe the possible interaction between the impact of drought and the environmental characteristics of the ecosystems, communities from different edaphic and structural contexts distributed along the double stress gradient of the Mediterranean mountains (high temperature and low precipitation at low elevation; low temperature and high irradiation at high elevation) have been analysed. Location: Central Mountain range of the Iberian Peninsula. Methods: Along the entire altitudinal gradient, 33 shrub communities belonging to different habitat typologies (shrublands, rocky areas, hedgerows, understorey) were sampled before and after the passage of summer, both in 2017 and 2019. A total of 1724 individuals and 15,516 leaves were collected and measured to estimate the mean values and diversity of SLA of each community. Results:The community-weighted mean and functional divergence have inverse quadratic relationships with the environmental gradient. Shrub communities at both ends of the gradient have low mean SLA values and high functional divergence of this trait. Summer drought implies a generalised decrease in the mean SLA of the communities throughout the gradient, as well as an alteration in functional richness and uniformity. However, the effect of summer drought on the plant community is mediated by the microenvironmental characteristics of its habitat.Conclusions: Drought acclimatisation of shrub communities through phenotypic plasticity leads to rapid changes in their functional leaf structure. In the long term, our results point to an increase in plant conservative strategies, reduced ecosystem productivity, slower nutrient recycling and the reduction of communities of specific habitats as drought increases.

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Section: Generating Region-specific Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within a community, the few species persisting under extreme climatic conditions are similar in their functional traits (de Bello et al, 2013), which results in a lower functional diversity, as observed along gradients of temperature and precipitation, for example on Mt. Kilimanjaro (Schellenberger Costa et al, 2017) and on a Mediterranean mountain (Bricca et al, 2022). Area effect: Land surface area per se does not have a direct ecological effect on plant individuals and thus, even though species richness should increase with area of the elevational bands (reflecting a larger source pool area), area should not cause a directional change in CWMs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanisms behind elevational plant species richness patterns revealed by a trait‐based approach

Backes

Römermann

Alexander

et al. 2023

J Vegetation Science

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Aims Elevational patterns of plant species richness may be caused by multiple underlying mechanisms, and the same pattern can be predicted by different mechanisms. Using the steep elevational gradient of Tenerife as a model system, we aimed to test if the application of a trait‐based approach can help disentangle the role of potential mechanisms behind local elevational plant species richness patterns. Location Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. Methods Based on vegetation relevés from natural vegetation and disturbed roadside habitat, along an elevational gradient of 2300 m, we observed a peak of plant species richness in the lowest third of the gradient. We considered three mechanisms potentially shaping this pattern: environmental filtering (temperature and precipitation), effects of area and disturbance. For these mechanisms, we hypothesized a distinct pattern of functional trait–elevation relationships. These were tested with in‐situ data of nine functional leaf traits, from which we calculated community‐weighted means (CWM) of traits and functional diversity (Rao's Q). Results While species richness was significantly positively correlated with temperature, area and disturbance, filtering through temperature was the only mechanism for which we could confirm most of our mechanism‐specific hypotheses about elevational trait changes: with increasing elevation, CWMs of most traits indicated shifts from acquisitive to conservative growth strategies, and functional diversity decreased. The shift of growth strategies also supported the disturbance effect, as we found overall more acquisitive communities at roadsides compared to natural habitats. Conclusions Our results indicate that simple correlations between species richness and abiotic variables are not necessarily causal. Additional testing of mechanism‐specific hypotheses for elevational patterns of both CWMs and functional diversity can help distinguishing between correlational and mechanistic relationships between species richness and environmental variables. The trait‐based framework presented here can be fruitfully applied to better understand species richness patterns in other regions and across other types of environmental gradients.

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Community assembly along climatic gradient: Contrasting pattern between- and within- species

Cited by 17 publications

References 72 publications

Experimentally induced drought and growing season stage modulate community-level functional traits in a temperate grassland

Experimentally induced drought and growing season stage modulate community-level functional traits in a temperate grassland

Diversity and mean specific leaf area of Mediterranean woody vegetation changes in response to summer drought across a double stress gradient: The role of phenotypic plasticity

Mechanisms behind elevational plant species richness patterns revealed by a trait‐based approach

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