Separating the role of biotic interactions and climate in determining adaptive response of plants to climate change

Tomiolo, Sara; Putten, Wim H. van der; Tielbӧrger, Katja

doi:10.1890/14-1445.1

Cited by 34 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 77 publications

(75 reference statements)

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“…To our knowledge, this is the first study to document how predicted changes in rainfall may affect the relationships among trophic groups within a tropical aquatic ecosystem. Our results add to a growing body of research that shows that climate change can disrupt biotic interactions between species (Hanson et al 2005, Montoya and Raffaelli 2010, Tomiolo et al 2015. We demonstrate that altered rainfall affects the relationships among trophic groups more than it directly affects their abundance, richness and composition.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

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Predicted rainfall changes disrupt trophic interactions in a tropical aquatic ecosystem

Pires

Marino

Srivastava

et al. 2016

Ecology

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Changes in the distribution of rainfall and the occurrence of extreme rain events will alter the size and persistence of aquatic ecosystems. Such alterations may affect the structure of local aquatic communities in terms of species composition, and by altering species interactions. In many aquatic ecosystems, leaf litter sustains detrital food webs and could regulate the responses of communities to changes in rainfall. Few empirical studies have focused on how rainfall changes will affect aquatic communities and none have evaluated if basal resource diversity can increase resistance to such rainfall effects. In this study, we used water-holding terrestrial bromeliads, a tropical aquatic ecosystem, to test how predicted rainfall changes and litter diversity may affect community composition and trophic interactions. We used structural equation modeling to investigate the combined effects of rainfall changes and litter diversity on trophic interactions. We demonstrated that changes in rainfall disrupted trophic relationships, even though there were only minor direct effects on species abundance, richness, and community composition. Litter diversity was not able to reduce the impact of changes in rainfall on trophic interactions. We suggest that changes in rainfall can alter the way in which species interact with each other, decreasing the linkages among trophic groups. Such reductions in biotic interactions under climate change will have critical consequences for the functioning of tropical aquatic ecosystems.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

“…, Montoya and Raffaelli , Tomiolo et al. ). We demonstrate that altered rainfall affects the relationships among trophic groups more than it directly affects their abundance, richness and composition.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Predicted rainfall changes disrupt trophic interactions in a tropical aquatic ecosystem

Pires

Marino

Srivastava

et al. 2016

Ecology

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“…For example, increasing rainfall commonly correlates with changes in soil properties both between sites and microhabitats (Michalet ), including our study gradient (Talmon, Sternberg & Grünzweig ). There is strong evidence that soil properties can influence or even override the effect of climate on plant–plant interactions (Pugnaire & Luque ; Weedon & Facelli ; Tomiolo, van der Putten & Tielbörger ). Strong shrub effects can even result purely from the specific soil microbe community developing beneath canopies – without any shrub effects on water or nutrients (Rodríguez‐Echeverría et al .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, confounding with other environmental variables such as changing temperatures, solar radiation, soil properties or shifting abundance of interacting organisms (e.g. Pugnaire & Luque 2001;Sthultz, Gehring & Whitham 2007;Talmon, Sternberg & Gr€ unzweig 2011;Pugnaire et al 2015) questions whether water is indeed the key mechanism behind the observed interaction pattern (Michalet 2006;Tomiolo, van der Putten & Tielb€ orger 2015). Secondly, the patterns observed along spatial gradients reflect the result of slow, long-term processes across millennia and include a long history of (co-)evolution of interacting species and/or their ecotypes (Sandel et al 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial and temporal aridity gradients provide poor proxies for plant–plant interactions under climate change: a large‐scale experiment

Metz

Tielbӧrger

2015

Functional Ecology

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Summary Plant–plant interactions may critically modify the impact of climate change on plant communities. However, the magnitude and even direction of potential future interactions remains highly debated, especially for water‐limited ecosystems. Predictions range from increasing facilitation to increasing competition with future aridification. The different methodologies used for assessing plant–plant interactions under changing environmental conditions may affect the outcome but they are not equally represented in the literature. Mechanistic experimental manipulations are rare compared with correlative approaches that infer future patterns from current observations along spatial climatic gradients. Here, we utilize a unique climatic gradient in combination with a large‐scale, long‐term experiment to test whether predictions about plant–plant interactions yield similar results when using experimental manipulations, spatial gradients or temporal variation. We assessed shrub–annual interactions in three different sites along a natural rainfall gradient (spatial) during 9 years of varying rainfall (temporal) and 8 years of dry and wet manipulations of ambient rainfall (experimental) that closely mimicked regional climate scenarios. The results were fundamentally different among all three approaches. Experimental water manipulations hardly altered shrub effects on annual plant communities for the assessed fitness parameters biomass and survival. Along the spatial gradient, shrub effects shifted from clearly negative to mildly facilitative towards drier sites, whereas temporal variation showed the opposite trend: more negative shrub effects in drier years. Based on our experimental approach, we conclude that shrub–annual interaction will remain similar under climate change. In contrast, the commonly applied space‐for‐time approach based on spatial gradients would have suggested increasing facilitative effects with climate change. We discuss potential mechanisms governing the differences among the three approaches. Our study highlights the critical importance of long‐term experimental manipulations for evaluating climate change impacts. Correlative approaches, for example along spatial or temporal gradients, may be misleading and overestimate the response of plant–plant interactions to climate change.

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“…For one, the inclusion of a diverse collection of accessions incorporates a broader array of evolutionary histories shaped by unique combinations of abiotic and biotic factors than would be found in genotypes collected from two contrasting environments (Wilczek et al 2014). In addition, provenance trials are well primed to investigate the spatial scale of local adaptation, the adaptive context of clinal trait variation, the extent of phenotypic plasticity within and among populations, and the degree to which gene flow can constrain local adaptation (Richardson et al 2014;Boshier et al 2015;Tomiolo, van der Putten & Tielb€ orger 2015). Lastly, the use of multiple common gardens enables researchers to disentangle the genetic and environmental factors that promote or impede local adaptation along climatic gradients (M aty as 1996; Wang, O'Neill & Aitken 2010).…”

Section: R E C O M M E N D a T I O N S F O R F U T U R E S T U D I E Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying targets and agents of selection: innovative methods to evaluate the processes that contribute to local adaptation

et al. 2017

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Summary Extensive empirical work has demonstrated local adaptation to discrete environments, yet few studies have elucidated the genetic and environment mechanisms that generate it. Here, we advocate for research that broadens our understanding of local adaptation beyond pattern and towards process. We discuss how studies of local adaptation can be designed to address two unresolved questions in evolutionary ecology: Does local adaptation result from fitness trade‐offs at individual loci across habitats? How do agents of selection interact to generate local adaptation to discrete contrasting habitats types and continuous environmental gradients? To inform future investigations of the genetic basis of local adaptation, we conducted a literature review of studies that mapped quantitative trait loci (QTL) for fitness in native field environments using reciprocal transplant experiments with hybrid mapping populations or Genome‐wide Association Study (GWAS) panels. We then reviewed the literature for field experiments that disentangle the contributions of various agents of selection to local adaptation. For each question, we suggest future lines of inquiry and discuss implications for climate change and agriculture research. (i) Studies in the native habitats of five biological systems revealed that local adaptation is more often caused by conditional neutrality than genetic trade‐offs at the level of the QTL. We consider the ramifications of this result and discuss knowledge gaps in our current understanding of the genetic basis of local adaptation. (ii) We uncovered only five studies that identified the agents of selection that contribute to local adaptation, and nearly all were conducted in discrete habitats rather than across the continuous environmental gradients that many species inhabit. We introduce a novel experimental framework for illuminating the processes underlying local adaptation. A holistic view of local adaptation is critical for predicting the responses of organisms to climate change, enhancing conservation efforts, and developing strategies to improve crop resilience to environmental stress. Experiments that manipulate agents of selection in native field environments using pedigreed populations or GWAS panels offer unique opportunities for detecting the genetic and environmental mechanisms that generate local adaptation.

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Separating the role of biotic interactions and climate in determining adaptive response of plants to climate change

Cited by 34 publications

References 77 publications

Predicted rainfall changes disrupt trophic interactions in a tropical aquatic ecosystem

Predicted rainfall changes disrupt trophic interactions in a tropical aquatic ecosystem

Spatial and temporal aridity gradients provide poor proxies for plant–plant interactions under climate change: a large‐scale experiment

Identifying targets and agents of selection: innovative methods to evaluate the processes that contribute to local adaptation

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