Novel trophic interactions under climate change promote alpine plant coexistence

Descombes, Patrice; Pitteloud, Camille; Glauser, Gaëtan; Defossez, Emmanuel; Kergunteuil, Alan; Allard, Pierre‐Marie; Rasmann, Sergio; Pellissier, Loïc

doi:10.1126/science.abd7015

Cited by 71 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 108 publications

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“…The situation may differ for certain highly specialized animals such as the ptarmigan that has lost a third of its population in the central Alps in recent decades, although it remains open to which extent predation played a role (e.g., the return of predators) [84]. Because of their mobility, insect herbivores may move upslope faster than plants do [66], and impact taller (mainly) graminoids more than small herbs, thus promoting species coexistence [85].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Is the Alpine Flora Comparatively Robust against Climatic Warming?

Körner

Hiltbrunner

2021

Diversity

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The alpine belt hosts the treeless vegetation above the high elevation climatic treeline. The way alpine plants manage to thrive in a climate that prevents tree growth is through small stature, apt seasonal development, and ‘managing’ the microclimate near the ground surface. Nested in a mosaic of micro-environmental conditions, these plants are in a unique position by a close-by neighborhood of strongly diverging microhabitats. The range of adjacent thermal niches that the alpine environment provides is exceeding the worst climate warming scenarios. The provided mountains are high and large enough, these are conditions that cause alpine plant species diversity to be robust against climatic change. However, the areal extent of certain habitat types will shrink as isotherms move upslope, with the potential areal loss by the advance of the treeline by far outranging the gain in new land by glacier retreat globally.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Is the Alpine Flora Comparatively Robust against Climatic Warming?

Körner

Hiltbrunner

2021

Diversity

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“…For this, -omics on model organisms such as Arabidopsis thaliana can also be used to understand how complex trait interactions determine plant adaptation in natural populations (Bergelson and Roux 2010). The integration of untargeted metabolomics analyses with classic functional trait measurements has been recently used to infer complex responses, which include physical and chemical changes of plant communities in response to warming and the concomitant higher herbivore pressure (Descombes et al 2020). However, how untargeted metabolomics, consisting of hundreds, if not thousands of molecular features, can be simultaneously analyzed with the relatively few classically measured functional traits, is one of the upcoming challenges in functional ecology research (Sedio 2017).…”

Section: Benefits and Perspectives Of The Trait-integration Conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconciling trait based perspectives along a trait‐integration continuum

Fontana

Rasmann

Bello

et al. 2021

Ecology

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Trait-based ecology has developed fast in the last decades, aiming to both explain mechanisms of community assembly, and predict patterns in nature, such as the effects of biodiversity shifts on key ecosystem processes. This body of work has stimulated the development of several conceptual frameworks and analytical methods, as well as the production of trait databases covering a growing number of taxa and organisational levels (from individuals to guilds). However, this breeding ground of novel concepts and tools currently lacks a general and coherent framework, under which functional traits can help ecologists organise their research aims, and serve as the common currency to unify several scientific disciplines. Specifically, we see a need to bridge the gaps between community ecology, ecosystem ecology, and evolutionary biology, in order to address the most pressing environmental issues of our time. To achieve this integration goal, we define a trait integration continuum, which reconciles alternative trait definitions and approaches in ecology. This continuum outlines a coherent progression of biological scales, along which traits interact and hierarchically integrate from genetic information, to whole-organism fitness-related traits, to trait syndromes and functional groups. Our conceptual scheme proposes that lower-level trait integration is closer to the inference of eco-evolutionary mechanisms determining population and community properties, whereas higher-level trait integration is most suited to the prediction of ecosystem processes. Within these two extremes, trait integration varies on a continuous scale, which relates directly to the inductive-deductive loop that should characterize the scientific method. With our proposed framework, we aim to facilitate scientists in contextualising their research based on the trait integration levels that matter most to their specific goals. Explicitly acknowledging the existence of a trait integration continuum is a promising way for framing the appropriate questions, thus obtaining reliable answers and results that are comparable across studies and disciplines.

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“…Each common garden consisted of five pairs of plant communities, each community being composed of 10 plant species (Figure 1b). Plant species were chosen from a previous metabolomic dataset of 416 alpine species, whose joint distribution covers the same elevation gradient and climatic extent as in this study (Descombes, Pitteloud, et al, 2020). This initial species-level F I G U R E 1 Schematic representation of the experimental design.…”

Section: Experimental Site and Field Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…alpine environment, biodiversity-ecosystem functioning, chemical defences, common garden experiment, plant-climate interactions, plant-herbivore interactions, secondary metabolites, untargeted HPLC-MS communities considering the number of total chemical compounds in plant species, independently of their identity. For this purpose, we used previous knowledge of the species-level phytochemical make-up for 416 plant species naturally occurring along Alpine slopes (Defossez et al, 2021;Descombes, Pitteloud, et al, 2020). We build common gardens along two elevation gradients, and at low (colline stage), mid (mountain) and high (alpine) elevation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of community‐wide phytochemical diversity on herbivory reverses from low to high elevation

et al. 2021

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1. Theory predicts that a large fraction of phytochemical diversity-the richness of individual chemical compounds produced by plants-governs the complexity of interactions between plants and their herbivores. While the effect of specific classes of chemical compounds on plant resistance against herbivores has been largely documented, the effect of community-level variation in phytochemical diversity on plant-herbivore interactions has so far received minimal consideration.2. We hypothesized that plant communities bearing on average higher levels of phytochemical diversity should sustain lower herbivory rates, overall. Yet, the magnitude of this effect could vary across different environmental conditions, potentially because of climate-mediated effects on phytochemical production and changes in herbivore community richness and composition.3. To address these hypotheses, we used previous knowledge of species-level phytochemical make-up for more than 400 plant species of the Swiss Alps. Using common garden experiments, we estimated season-wide herbivore damage on low (average 3,500 unique molecules) and high (average 4,500 unique molecules) phytochemical diversity plant communities that were planted in the colline, mountain and alpine vegetation sites along two elevation transects in the Alps. 4. We found that high phytochemical diversity plant communities showed reduced levels of herbivore damage in the colline (low elevation) sites, but this pattern reversed in the alpine (high elevation) sites. Our results suggest that the outcome of phytochemical diversity on plant-herbivore interactions depends on the characteristics of the local herbivore communities, together with trade-offs between chemical defences and other plant traits (i.e. physical defences and plant palatability). 5.Synthesis. Phytochemical diversity is a key component of functional diversity, influencing community composition and dynamics. We show that the effect of phytochemical diversity on herbivory is environmental-dependent, generating ecological switches when moving from low to high elevation. Through upward | 47

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Novel trophic interactions under climate change promote alpine plant coexistence

Cited by 71 publications

References 108 publications

Why Is the Alpine Flora Comparatively Robust against Climatic Warming?

Why Is the Alpine Flora Comparatively Robust against Climatic Warming?

Reconciling trait based perspectives along a trait‐integration continuum

The effect of community‐wide phytochemical diversity on herbivory reverses from low to high elevation

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