Leaf‐trait plasticity and species vulnerability to climate change in a Mongolian steppe

Liancourt, Pierre; Boldgiv, Bazartseren; Song, Dunlun; Spence, Laura A.; Helliker, Brent R.; Petraitis, Peter S.; Casper, Brenda B.

doi:10.1111/gcb.12934

Cited by 70 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…More work is clearly necessary to fully understand why results of global change experiments can be system or location specific, what global change drivers may have the greatest impact on a system, and how we can manage lands to minimize negative impacts of climate change. Future studies exploring climate‐induced changes in plant community composition by focusing on responses of component species (Liu et al., 2017) in light of plant functional traits (Liancourt et al., 2015) should provide insight into the context dependency of the impacts of climate change. Understanding how temperature and soil moisture may interactively impact plant productivity, biodiversity and community composition will only grow increasingly important in the years to come as climate change continues to alter both temperature and moisture regimes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of increased temperature on plant communities depend on landscape location and precipitation

Cowles

Boldgiv

Liancourt

et al. 2018

Ecology and Evolution

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Global climate change is affecting and will continue to affect ecosystems worldwide. Specifically, temperature and precipitation are both expected to shift globally, and their separate and interactive effects will likely affect ecosystems differentially depending on current temperature, precipitation regimes, and other biotic and environmental factors. It is not currently understood how the effects of increasing temperature on plant communities may depend on either precipitation or where communities lie on soil moisture gradients. Such knowledge would play a crucial role in increasing our predictive ability for future effects of climate change in different systems. To this end, we conducted a multi‐factor global change experiment at two locations, differing in temperature, moisture, aspect, and plant community composition, on the same slope in the northern Mongolian steppe. The natural differences in temperature and moisture between locations served as a point of comparison for the experimental manipulations of temperature and precipitation. We conducted two separate experiments, one examining the effect of climate manipulation via open‐top chambers (OTCs) across the two different slope locations, the other a factorial OTC by watering experiment at one of the two locations. By combining these experiments, we were able to assess how OTCs impact plant productivity and diversity across a natural and manipulated range of soil moisture. We found that warming effects were context dependent, with the greatest negative impacts of warming on diversity in the warmer, drier upper slope location and in the unwatered plots. Our study is an important step in understanding how global change will affect ecosystems across multiple scales and locations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of increased temperature on plant communities depend on landscape location and precipitation

Cowles

Boldgiv

Liancourt

et al. 2018

Ecology and Evolution

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“…without temperature limitation), reducing water loss through high LDMC is a relevant strategy (Grime ; Ackerly ; Liancourt et al . ); (ii) combined increases of drought and temperature, LDMC may increase, whereas SLA decreases (Liancourt et al . ); (iii) increasing nutrients, a rapid resource‐acquisitive strategy (i.e.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…); (ii) combined increases of drought and temperature, LDMC may increase, whereas SLA decreases (Liancourt et al . ); (iii) increasing nutrients, a rapid resource‐acquisitive strategy (i.e. high SLA) is beneficial and would confer a competitive advantage under the subsequent increase in competition (Wright et al .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resistance of plant–plant networks to biodiversity loss and secondary extinctions following simulated environmental changes

Losapio

Schöb

2017

Functional Ecology

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Summary Plant interactions are fundamental processes for structuring plant communities and are an important mechanism governing the response of plant species and communities to environmental changes. Thus, understanding the role played by the interaction network in modulating the impact of environmental changes on plant community composition and diversity is crucial. Here, we aimed to develop a new analytical and conceptual framework to evaluate the responses of plant communities to environmental changes. This framework uses functional traits as sensitivity measures for simulated environmental changes and assesses the consequences of microhabitat loss. We show here its application to an alpine plant community where we recorded functional traits [specific leaf area (SLA) and leaf dry matter content (LDMC)] of all plants associated with three foundation species or the surrounding open areas. We then simulated primary species loss based on different scenarios of environmental change and explored community persistence to the loss of foundation species. Generally, plant community responses differed among environmental change scenarios. In a scenario of increasing drought alone (i.e. species with lower LDMC were lost first) or increasing drought with increasing temperature (i.e. species with lower LDMC and higher SLA were lost first), the plant community resisted because drought‐tolerant foundation species tolerated those deteriorating conditions. However, in scenarios with increasing nitrogen input (i.e. species having lower SLA were lost earlier), foundation species accelerated species loss due to their early primary extinctions and the corresponding secondary extinctions of species associated to their microhabitat. The resistance of a plant community depends on the driver of environmental change, meaning that the prediction of the fate of this system is depending on the knowledge of the main driver of environmental change. Our framework provides a mechanistic understanding of an ecosystem response to such environmental changes thanks to the integration of biology‐informed criteria of species sensitivities to environmental factors into a network of interacting species. A http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12839/suppinfo is available for this article.

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“…Climate change has prompted plastic responses in physiological traits for a wide variety of plant taxa (Gunderson et al, 2010;Liancourt et al, 2015), yet few studies examine the fitness consequences of plastic responses. The direction and adaptive value of plasticity can be assessed experimentally, where common genotypes are exposed to contrasting conditions designed to simulate a changing climate (Fig.…”

Section: Phenotypic Plasticitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining plant physiological responses to climate change through an evolutionary lens

et al. 2016

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Leaf‐trait plasticity and species vulnerability to climate change in a Mongolian steppe

Cited by 70 publications

References 64 publications

Effects of increased temperature on plant communities depend on landscape location and precipitation

Effects of increased temperature on plant communities depend on landscape location and precipitation

Resistance of plant–plant networks to biodiversity loss and secondary extinctions following simulated environmental changes

Examining plant physiological responses to climate change through an evolutionary lens

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