Long‐term community change: bryophytes are more responsive than vascular plants to nitrogen deposition and warming

Becker‐Scarpitta, Antoine; Bardat, Jacques; Lalanne, Arnault; Vellend, Mark

doi:10.1111/jvs.12579

Cited by 44 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…Thus, even if communities on infertile sites, with slow‐growing stress‐tolerant plants, resist better against short‐term climatic changes, they may still strongly react to long‐term changes in climate regimes. Despite their characterization as stress‐tolerators with slow growth (Grime, Rincon, & Wickerson, ), mosses with clonal growth and high spore‐dispersal capacity might be especially responsive (see also Becker Scarpitta, Bardat, Lalanne, & Vellend, ). In the time scales of two or more decades, even slow‐growing species can attain a dominant position (Saccone et al, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Site fertility drives temporal turnover of vegetation at high latitudes

Maliniemi

Happonen

Virtanen

2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Experimental evidence shows that site fertility is a key modulator underlying plant community changes under climate change. Communities on fertile sites, with species having fast dynamics, have been found to react more strongly to climate change than communities on infertile sites with slow dynamics. However, it is still unclear whether this generally applies to high‐latitude plant communities in natural environments at broad spatial scales. We tested a hypothesis that vegetation of fertile sites experiences greater changes over several decades and thus would be more responsive under contemporary climate change compared to infertile sites that are expected to show more resistance. We resurveyed understorey communities (vascular plants, bryophytes, and lichens) of four infertile and four fertile forest sites along a latitudinal bioclimatic gradient. Sites had remained outside direct human disturbance. We analyzed the magnitude of temporal community turnover, changes in the abundances of plant morphological groups and strategy classes, and changes in species diversity. In agreement with our hypothesis, temporal turnover of communities was consistently greater on fertile sites compared to infertile sites. However, our results suggest that the larger turnover of fertile communities is not primarily related to the direct effects of climatic warming. Furthermore, community changes in both fertile and infertile sites showed remarkable variation in terms of shares of plant functional groups and strategy classes and measures of species diversity. This further emphasizes the essential role of baseline environmental conditions and nonclimatic drivers underlying vegetation changes. Our results show that site fertility is a key determinant of the overall rate of high‐latitude vegetation changes but the composition of plant communities in different ecological contexts is variously impacted by nonclimatic drivers over time.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Site fertility drives temporal turnover of vegetation at high latitudes

Maliniemi

Happonen

Virtanen

2019

Ecology and Evolution

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“…Further, longer term experimental warming (9-16 years) decreased species richness and abundance of mosses in a mid-arctic site in Alaska, but not in subarctic low-and high elevation sites in Sweden (Lang et al 2012). Contrastingly, long-term resampling in a temperate forest showed that bryophyte richness increased with climate warming, as did thermophilization (Becker Scarpitta et al 2017). This indicates that bryophyte responses to warming are often site-and species-dependent (Hollister et al 2005;Klanderud 2008), and consequently, the effects of climate warming on bryophytes may become masked when they are treated as a broad group.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Ambient and experimental warming effects on an alpine bryophyte community

et al. 2022

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Alpine and arctic bryophytes have been found to respond negatively to climate change, but since they are often analysed as one functional group, there is limited knowledge on species-specific responses. In this study, we examine how nearly two decades of experimental warming by open top chambers (OTC) and ambient warming have affected the bryophyte community structure in an alpine Dryas octopetala heath in Finse, southwest Norway. In contrast to what we expected, we found that bryophyte abundance, species richness and evenness increased over time in the control plots, indicating a positive response to ambient warming. However, the increase in bryophyte abundance and cover was suppressed in experimentally warmed plots compared to control plots. Bryophyte community composition changed in a similar direction in response to both ambient and experimental warming. Acrocarpous mosses were not affected stronger by warming than pleurocarpous mosses, but individual species and taxa showed contrasting responses. Our study highlights the importance of studying bryophyte responses to environmental change, as well as combining long-term observations with experimental warming.

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“…An important limitation of such studies is their constrained ability to test the ecological mechanisms underlying temporal community change. Indeed, most legacy studies pertain to a single site or region, meaning a set of plots within an area sharing a similar climate and history, in which case community change might be caused by many local changes, such as ongoing land use (Hermy & Verheyen, 2007;Kampichler, van Turnhout, Devictor, & van der Jeugd, 2012;Newbold et al, 2015), historical management legacies (Becker, Spanka, Schröder, & Leuschner, 2016;Perring et al, 2017;Vanhellemont, Baeten, & Verheyen, 2014), nitrogen deposition (Becker-Scarpitta, Bardat, Lalanne, & Vellend, 2017), or grazing (Frerker, Sabo, & Waller, 2014;Vild et al, 2016).…”

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confidence: 99%

Four decades of plant community change along a continental gradient of warming

Becker‐Scarpitta

Vissault

Vellend

2019

Global Change Biology

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Many studies of individual sites have revealed biotic changes consistent with climate warming (e.g., upward elevational distribution shifts), but our understanding of the tremendous variation among studies in the magnitude of such biotic changes is minimal. In this study, we resurveyed forest vegetation plots 40 years after the initial surveys in three protected areas along a west‐to‐east gradient of increasingly steep recent warming trends in eastern Canada (Québec). Consistent with the hypothesis that climate warming has been an important driver of vegetation change, we found an increasing magnitude of changes in species richness and composition from west to east among the three parks. For the two mountainous parks, we found no significant changes in elevational species’ distributions in the easternmost park (raw mean = +11.4 m at Forillon Park) where warming has been minimal, and significant upward distribution shifts in the centrally located park (+38.9 m at Mont‐Mégantic), where the recent warming trend has been marked. Community Temperature Indices (CTI), reflecting the average affinities of locally co‐occurring species to temperature conditions across their geographic ranges (“Species Temperature Indices”), did not change over time as predicted. However, close examination of the underpinnings of CTI values suggested a high sensitivity to uncertainty in individual species’ temperature indices, and so a potentially limited responsiveness to warming. Overall, by testing a priori predictions concerning variation among parks in the direction and magnitude of vegetation changes, we have provided stronger evidence for a link between climate warming and biotic responses than otherwise possible and provided a potential explanation for large variation among studies in warming‐related biotic changes.

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Long‐term community change: bryophytes are more responsive than vascular plants to nitrogen deposition and warming

Cited by 44 publications

References 65 publications

Site fertility drives temporal turnover of vegetation at high latitudes

Site fertility drives temporal turnover of vegetation at high latitudes

Ambient and experimental warming effects on an alpine bryophyte community

Four decades of plant community change along a continental gradient of warming

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