Thermal niches are more conserved at cold than warm limits in arctic‐alpine plant species

Pellissier, Loïc; Bråthen, Kari Anne; Vittoz, Pascal; Yoccoz, Nigel G.; Dubuis, Anne; Meier, Eliane S.; Zimmermann, Niklaus E.; Randin, Christophe F.; Thuiller, Wilfried; Garraud, Luc; Es, Jérémie Van; Guisan, Antoine

doi:10.1111/geb.12057

Cited by 64 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…On the other hand, evidence for competitive replacement of high-alpine species is, at best, weak, even after decades of ongoing climate warming. Also, species in cold habitats are assumed to be less affected by competition (Pellissier et al 2013) and their niches to be more closely related to their physiological limits ). However, these studies do not take into account that some alpine species are true cold species, i.e.…”

Section: Alpine Plants On the Verge To Extinction Or Safe In Cold Micmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-equilibrium in Alpine Plant Assemblages: Shifts in Europe’s Summit Floras

Rixen

Wipf

2017

Advances in Global Change Research

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Climate warming has been more pronounced in Arctic and alpine areas, and changes in the mountain flora can be expected as the temperature envelope moves upslope. On the one hand, alpine habitats will shrink due to upward migration of species from lower areas, such as trees and tall plants. On the other hand, extinctions of summit plants may be slowed down considerably by the high diversity of microhabitats, the longevity of alpine plants and positive plant-plant interactions in extreme environments. This review chapter attempts to document and monitor vegetation changes on mountain summits. Vegetation surveys that repeat century-old historical vegetation records show considerable upward migration and subsequent increases in species on summits. This trend apparently has accelerated in recent decades. Detailed monitoring of the last decade in European mountain ranges, however, shows that this vegetation change may be at the cost of rare endemic species and alpine specialists in drier Mediterranean regions. This chapter furthermore reviews other factors than temperature influencing alpine vegetation, namely precipitation and snow, nutrients, atmospheric CO 2 concentrations and land use. A subsequent question is how threatened mountain flora is by the ongoing environmental changes. Finally, this chapter discusses options for conservation and land use in high-alpine areas.

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Section: Alpine Plants On the Verge To Extinction Or Safe In Cold Micmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-equilibrium in Alpine Plant Assemblages: Shifts in Europe’s Summit Floras

Rixen

Wipf

2017

Advances in Global Change Research

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“…Another approach is to compare entire curves quantitatively but without considering uncertainty in the curves (Warren et al 2008;Hill et al 2013). Similarly, thermal tolerance limits are often determined from observational data without any estimate of uncertainty (Pellissier et al 2013;Gouveia et al 2014). The Bayesian semi-parametric model used here is advantageous because it quantifies the uncertainty in the attributes of species response curves without assuming a rigorous (parametric) shape of the response.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1a), is crucial for answering many physiological, ecological and evolutionary questions even if the objective is not to predict or explain species distributions per se. For example, scientists are often interested in species coexistence, niche separation or overlap (Silvertown 2004); the relative position or critical limits of species' niches on environmental gradients (Hernandez & Mulla 2008;Sinervo et al 2010); niche conservatism over space and time (Peterson et al 2009;Pellissier et al 2013); or niche shifts of invasive species in new environments (Hill et al 2013). For these topics, the shape and attributes of species response curves are the focus of the research, and it is often necessary to compare and test for differences between different curves (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bayesian methods for comparing species physiological and ecological response curves

Ashcroft

Casanova-Katny

Mengersen

et al. 2016

Ecological Informatics

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Many ecological questions require information on species' optimal conditions or critical limits along environmental gradients. These attributes can be compared to answer questions on niche partitioning, species coexistence and niche conservatism. However, these comparisons are unconvincing when existing methods do not quantify the uncertainty in the attributes or rely on assumptions about the shape of species' responses to the environmental gradient. The aim of this study was to develop a model to quantify the uncertainty in the attributes of species response curves and allow them to be tested for substantive differences without making assumptions about the shape of the responses. We developed a model that used Bayesian penalised splines to produce and compare response curves for any two given species. These splines allow the data to determine the shape of the response curves rather than making a priori assumptions. The models were implemented using the R2OpenBUGS package for R, which uses Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation to repetitively fit alternative response curves to the data. As each iteration produces a different curve that varies in optima, niche breadth and limits, the model estimates the uncertainty in each of these attributes and the probability that the two curves are different. The models were tested using two datasets of mosses from Antarctica. Both datasets had a high degree of scatter, which is typical of ecological research. This noise resulted in considerable uncertainty in the optima and limits of species response curves, but substantive differences were found. Schistidium antarctici was found to inhabit wetter habitats than Ceratodon purpureus, and Polytrichastrum alpinum had a lower optimal temperature for photosynthesis than Chorisodontium aciphyllum under high light conditions. Our study highlights the importance of considering uncertainty in physiological optima and other attributes of species response curves. We found that apparent differences in optima of 7.5 °C were not necessarily substantive when dealing with noisy ecological data, and it is necessary to consider the uncertainty in attributes when comparing the curves for different species. The model introduced here could increase the robustness of research on niche partitioning, species coexistence and niche conservatism. AbstractMany ecological questions require information on species' optimal conditions or critical limits along environmental gradients. These attributes can be compared to answer questions on niche partitioning, species coexistence and niche conservatism. However, these comparisons are unconvincing when existing methods do not quantify the uncertainty in the attributes or rely on assumptions about the shape of species' responses to the environmental gradient. The aim of this study was to develop a model to quantify the uncertainty in the attributes of species response curves and allow them to be tested for substantive differences without making assumptions about the shape of the responses. We developed ...

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“…Cold temperatures also limit species distributions and diversity along elevation gradients worldwide (Körner and Paulsen, 2004). Furthermore, cold thermal limits of European Holarctic plants may be more conserved than warm limits (Pellissier et al, 2013), thus providing a conservative test for niche changes. Another important abiotic variable for plant species is water availability as influence by precipitation.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temperature Range Shifts for Three European Tree Species over the Last 10,000 Years

et al. 2016

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We quantified the degree to which the relationship between the geographic distribution of three major European tree species, Abies alba, Fagus sylvatica and Picea abies and January temperature (Tjan) has remained stable over the past 10,000 years. We used an extended data-set of fossil pollen records over Europe to reconstruct spatial variation in Tjan values for each 1000-year time slice between 10,000 and 3000 years BP (before present). We evaluated the relationships between the occurrences of the three species at each time slice and the spatially interpolated Tjan values, and compared these to their modern temperature ranges. Our results reveal that F. sylvatica and P. abies experienced Tjan ranges during the Holocene that differ from those of the present, while A. alba occurred over a Tjan range that is comparable to its modern one. Our data suggest the need for re-evaluation of the assumption of stable climate tolerances at a scale of several thousand years. The temperature range instability in our observed data independently validates similar results based exclusively on modeled Holocene temperatures. Our study complements previous studies that used modeled data by identifying variation in frequencies of occurrence of populations within the limits of suitable climate. However, substantial changes that were observed in the realized thermal niches over the Holocene tend to suggest that predicting future species distributions should not solely be based on modern realized niches, and needs to account for the past variation in the climate variables that drive species ranges.

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Thermal niches are more conserved at cold than warm limits in arctic‐alpine plant species

Cited by 64 publications

References 66 publications

Non-equilibrium in Alpine Plant Assemblages: Shifts in Europe’s Summit Floras

Non-equilibrium in Alpine Plant Assemblages: Shifts in Europe’s Summit Floras

Bayesian methods for comparing species physiological and ecological response curves

Temperature Range Shifts for Three European Tree Species over the Last 10,000 Years

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