Estudios socio-ecológicos de largo plazo en los sitios fundadores de la red LTSER-Chile: desafíos y oportunidades para el futuro

Gaxiola, Aurora; Celis‐Diez, Juan L.; Rozzi, Ricardo

doi:10.4067/s0717-92002014000300017

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 21 publications

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“…We used plant cover data collected annually in control plots from the large-scale experiment established in 1989 in FJ (Gutiérrez et al 2010;Gaxiola et al 2014). Since 1989, cover of ephemeral plants was measured each year at the peak of the growing season (September -October) using the point intercept method.…”

Section: Long-term Plant Cover and Seed Bank Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Bet-hedging strategies of native and exotic annuals promote coexistence in semiarid Chile

Jiménez

Gaxiola

Armestó

et al. 2016

Journal of Arid Environments

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Scientists are increasingly interested in the evolutionary responses of organisms to unpredictable, variable, and extreme climate changes. In semiarid environments, inter-annual variability in the frequency and amount of rainfall affects both the growth and recruitment of plant species, especially annuals. In these inherently variable environments, individual selection should favor demographic responses that spread the risk of mortality over time and enhance long-term reproductive success (i.e., bet-hedging strategies). However, the same processes that allow the persistence and recruitment of native species could facilitate the introduction and establishment of exotics. We assessed whether native and exotic annuals in semiarid Chile displayed similar or contrasting bet-hedging traits, and discuss mechanisms of coexistence of both types of species and their demographic variation under interannual rainfall variability driven by El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). We analyzed a proxy of long-term fitness, i.e., the variability of seed density over 17 years, for the two most common native and two exotic annual plant species present in the study area. We experimentally tested whether the quality of the maternal environment (soil water supply in a given year) had an extended effect (e.g. the next year) on the proportion of seed germination or on the mean and/or variability of seed size and seed dormancy. Results showed that native and exotic species in this annual plant assemblage displayed contrasting bet-hedging strategies as evolutionary responses to variable rainfall. Although rainfall variability promotes the evolution of bet-hedging strategies, the nature of these strategies varies across species, presumably to minimize competitive exclusion. In semiarid Chile, the success of two exotic ephemerals that are components of a diverse community of native annual species seems to reflect bethedging germination strategies that complement rather than compete with those expressed in dominant natives.

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Section: Long-term Plant Cover and Seed Bank Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Bet-hedging strategies of native and exotic annuals promote coexistence in semiarid Chile

Jiménez

Gaxiola

Armestó

et al. 2016

Journal of Arid Environments

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Chilean long-term Socio-Ecological Research Network: progresses and challenges towards improving stewardship of unique ecosystems

Frêne

Armestó

Nespolo

et al. 2023

Rev. Chil. de Hist. Nat.

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Ecosystems provide a variety of benefits to human society and humanity’s utilization of ecosystems affects their composition, structure, and functions. Global change drivers demand us to study the interactions between ecological and social systems, and advise strategies to protect the large fraction of Chilean unique ecosystems. Long-term research and monitoring are vital for meaningful understanding of human impacts and socio-ecological feedback, which occur over multiple spatial and time-scales and can be invisible to traditional grant-sponsored short-term studies.Despite the large fraction of unique ecosystems, Chilean government agencies have not established long-term monitoring programs to inform and guide management decisions for use, conservation, and adaptation to climate change. Responding to this void, the Chilean Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research Network (LTSER-Chile) was created, comprising nine study sites funded by a variety of private and public institutions, that broadly seeks to understand how global change is altering biodiversity and ecosystem functions. The LTSER-Chile is currently in a phase of institutional consolidation to achieve its objectives of alignment with international efforts, fill the need for high-quality, long-term data on social, biological and physical components of Chilean ecosystems, and develop itself as an open research platform for the world. Despite the wide diversity of ecosystems ecncompased by LTSER-Chile sites, several common variables are monitored, especially climatic and hydrographic variables and many ecological indicator variables that consider temporal fluctuations, population and community dynamics.The main challenges currently facing the LTSER-Chile are to secure funding to maintain existing long-term monitoring programs, to persuade public and private decision-makers about its central role in informing and anticipating socio-ecological problems, and to achieve greater ecosystem representation by integrating new long-term study sites. This will require a more decisive political commitment of the State, to improve the stewardship of our unique terrestrial and marine ecosystems, and the realization that sound ecologically-sustainable policies will never be possible without a national monitoring network. We argue that the State should build on LTSER and several other private and university initiatives to provide the country with a monitoring network. In the absence of this commitment, the LTSER system is subject to discontinuity and frequent interruptions, which jeopardizes the long-term effort to understand the functioning of nature and its biodiversity.

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Estudios socio-ecológicos de largo plazo en los sitios fundadores de la red LTSER-Chile: desafíos y oportunidades para el futuro

Cited by 2 publications

References 21 publications

Bet-hedging strategies of native and exotic annuals promote coexistence in semiarid Chile

Bet-hedging strategies of native and exotic annuals promote coexistence in semiarid Chile

Chilean long-term Socio-Ecological Research Network: progresses and challenges towards improving stewardship of unique ecosystems

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