Increased seedling establishment via enemy release at the upper elevational range limit of sugar maple

Urli, Morgane; Brown, Clifford M.; Perez, Rosela Narváez; Chagnon, Pierre‐Luc; Vellend, Mark

doi:10.1002/ecy.1566

Cited by 31 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…1), and mirrors single species or single site dendroecological studies (Nakawatase & Peterson 2006;Case & Peterson 2007;Griesbauer et al 2011). Together, this suggests that identifiably harsh range boundaries tend to be under climatic control (but see Urli et al 2016), providing a useful rule of thumb for where correlative distribution models may be used to forecast changes in suitable habitat under climate change.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

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Local range boundaries vs. large‐scale trade‐offs: climatic and competitive constraints on tree growth

Anderegg

HilleRisLambers

2019

Ecology Letters

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Species often respond to human‐caused climate change by shifting where they occur on the landscape. To anticipate these shifts, we need to understand the forces that determine where species currently occur. We tested whether a long‐hypothesised trade‐off between climate and competitive constraints explains where tree species grow on mountain slopes. Using tree rings, we reconstructed growth sensitivity to climate and competition in range centre and range margin tree populations in three climatically distinct regions. We found that climate often constrains growth at environmentally harsh elevational range boundaries, and that climatic and competitive constraints trade‐off at large spatial scales. However, there was less evidence that competition consistently constrained growth at benign elevational range boundaries; thus, local‐scale climate‐competition trade‐offs were infrequent. Our work underscores the difficulty of predicting local‐scale range dynamics, but suggests that the constraints on tree performance at a large‐scale (e.g. latitudinal) may be predicted from ecological theory.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…Together, this suggests that identifiably harsh range boundaries tend to be under climatic control (but see Urli et al . ), providing a useful rule of thumb for where correlative distribution models may be used to forecast changes in suitable habitat under climate change.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local range boundaries vs. large‐scale trade‐offs: climatic and competitive constraints on tree growth

Anderegg

HilleRisLambers

2019

Ecology Letters

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“…Seed predation and herbivory influence the establishment of conifer species (Johnson & Fryer, ; Lobo, ) and play an important role in the regeneration dynamics of treeline systems (Brown & Vellend, ; Cairns & Moen, ; Cairns, Lafon, Moen, & Young, ; Kambo & Danby, ; Neuschulz, Merges, Bollmann, Gugerli, & Böhning‐Gaese, ; Urli et al, ). We found evidence that animal activities significantly reduced seedling establishment, particularly in the forest and transition zones of our study sites.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Seedling establishment is a demographic bottleneck to regeneration beyond current treelines; although the establishment and survival of seedlings is an obvious precursor to the presence of mature trees, they are also very sensitive to environmental conditions and mortality can be extremely high among young tree seedlings (Alexander, 1987;Germino, Smith, & Resor, 2002). In particular, limitations to establishment beyond the treeline have been attributed to the long time periods required for trees to reach reproductive maturity (Aitken, Yeaman, Holliday, Wang, & Curtis-Mclane, 2008), the variable importance of interspecific interactions with other plant species (Loranger, Zotz, & Bader, 2017;Maher, Germino, & Hasselquist, 2005), the effects of predation and herbivory on tree seeds and seedlings (Brown & Vellend, 2014;Kambo & Danby, 2017;Urli, Brown, Perez, Chagnon, & Vellend, 2016) and the effects of microclimate extremes (Renard, Mcintire, & Fajardo, 2016;Rundel et al, 2014). Importantly, these key factors do not act in isolation from one another, and studies of establishment dynamics should therefore attempt to consider their effects simultaneously.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Limited prospects for future alpine treeline advance in the Canadian Rocky Mountains

Davis

Gedalof

2018

Global Change Biology

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Treeline advance has occurred throughout the twentieth century in mountainous regions around the world; however, local variation and temporal lags in responses to climate warming indicate that the upper limits of some treelines are not necessarily in climatic equilibrium. These observations suggest that factors other than climate are constraining tree establishment beyond existing treelines. Using a seed addition experiment, we tested the effects of seed availability, predation and microsite limitation on the establishment of two subalpine tree species (Picea engelmannii and Abies lasiocarpa) across four treelines in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The effect of vegetation removal on seedling growth was also determined, and microclimate conditions were monitored. Establishment limitations observed in the field were placed in context with the effects of soil properties observed in a parallel experiment. The seed addition experiment revealed reduced establishment with increasing elevation, suggesting that although establishment within the treeline ecotone is at least partially seed limited, other constraints are more important beyond the current treeline. The effects of herbivory and microsite availability significantly reduced seedling establishment but were less influential beyond the treeline. Microclimate monitoring revealed that establishment was negatively related to growing season temperatures and positively related to the duration of winter snow cover, counter to the conventional expectation that establishment is limited by low temperatures. Overall, it appears that seedling establishment beyond treeline is predominantly constrained by a combination of high soil surface temperatures during the growing season, reduced winter snowpack and unfavourable soil properties. Our study supports the assertion that seedling establishment in alpine treeline ecotones is simultaneously limited by various climatic and nonclimatic drivers. Together, these factors may limit future treeline advance in the Canadian Rocky Mountains and should be considered when assessing the potential for treeline advance in alpine systems elsewhere.

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“…Non-climatic factors include abiotic influences such as connectivity, soil properties and disturbance, as well as biotic factors such as the interaction with other species (i.e. predators, competitors, vectors) which may act as biological controls or may facilitate expansion (Hillyer and Silman 2010, Brown and Vellend 2014, Alexander et al 2015, Urli et al 2016. The effect of non-climatic factors could potentially impede the range shifts of some plant species, while facilitating movement of others, resulting in accelerated expansion (Brown andVellend 2014, Urli et al 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Small mammal controls on the climate‐driven range shift of woody plant species

Mortelliti

Grentzmann

Fraver

et al. 2019

Oikos

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Climate change is resulting in shifts in species’ ranges as species inhabit new climatically suitable areas. A key factor affecting range‐shifts is the interaction with predators. Small mammals, being primary seed predators and dispersers in forest ecosystems, may play a major role in determining which plant species will successfully expand and the rate at which range‐shifts will occur. Plants dispersing seeds beyond the species’ current range limits will encounter seed predators to which these seeds are novel; however, empirical studies of seed predator–novel seed interactions are lacking. The aims of our study were to: 1) quantify seed selection by small mammals presented with ‘novel’ seeds; 2) quantify the post‐selection fate of ‘novel’ seeds; and 3) identify seed traits that affect seed selection and post‐selection seed fate. We designed a field experiment exposing small mammal communities to novel seeds produced by plants expected to shift their ranges in response to climate change. We matched novel seeds with reference ‘familiar’ seeds and studied key steps defining interactions between small mammals and novel seeds. We found that the probability of selection of a novel seed varied among species and was, at times, higher than the selection probability of familiar seeds. Key traits that affected seed selection and the distance a seed was dispersed for caching were shell hardness and seed mass. We also found that 33% of dispersed seeds were cached in optimal germination sites (e.g. within fallen logs and buried under the leaf litter mat). Through seed emergence trials we found that emergence was higher for larger seeds, suggesting that the role of small mammals may be modulated by emergence rates. Our results suggest that the interaction between small mammals and novel seeds may have cascading effects on climate‐induced plant range shifts and community composition.

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Increased seedling establishment via enemy release at the upper elevational range limit of sugar maple

Cited by 31 publications

References 54 publications

Local range boundaries vs. large‐scale trade‐offs: climatic and competitive constraints on tree growth

Local range boundaries vs. large‐scale trade‐offs: climatic and competitive constraints on tree growth

Limited prospects for future alpine treeline advance in the Canadian Rocky Mountains

Small mammal controls on the climate‐driven range shift of woody plant species

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