scholarly journals Trophic cascades, invasive species and body-size hierarchies interactively modulate climate change responses of ecotonal temperate–boreal forest

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1605) ◽  
pp. 2955-2961 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee E. Frelich ◽  
Rolf O. Peterson ◽  
Martin Dovčiak ◽  
Peter B. Reich ◽  
John A. Vucetich ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Boreal Forest ◽  
Tree Species ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
Trophic Levels ◽  
Temperate Species ◽  
Climate Change Responses ◽  
Exotic Earthworms ◽  
Below Ground ◽  
Induced Changes

As the climate warms, boreal tree species are expected to be gradually replaced by temperate species within the southern boreal forest. Warming will be accompanied by changes in above- and below-ground consumers: large moose ( Alces alces ) replaced by smaller deer ( Odocoileus virginianus ) above-ground, and small detritivores replaced by larger exotic earthworms below-ground. These shifts may induce a cascade of ecological impacts across trophic levels that could alter the boreal to temperate forest transition. Deer are more likely to browse saplings of temperate tree species, and European earthworms favour seedlings of boreal tree species more than temperate species, potentially hindering the ability of temperate tree species to expand northwards. We hypothesize that warming-induced changes in consumers will lead to novel plant communities by changing the filter on plant species success, and that above- and below-ground cascades of trophic interactions will allow boreal tree species to persist during early phases of warming, leading to an abrupt change at a later time. The synthesis of evidence suggests that consumers can modify the climate change-induced transition of ecosystems.

scholarly journals Intraspecific variation in thermal tolerance differs between tropical and temperate fishes

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. J. H. Nati ◽  
M. B. S. Svendsen ◽  
S. Marras ◽  
S. S. Killen ◽  
J. F. Steffensen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Intraspecific Variation ◽  
Fish Species ◽  
Thermal Tolerance ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
Temperate Species ◽  
Tropical Species ◽  
Upper Thermal Tolerance

AbstractHow ectothermic animals will cope with global warming is a critical determinant of the ecological impacts of climate change. There has been extensive study of upper thermal tolerance limits among fish species but how intraspecific variation in tolerance may be affected by habitat characteristics and evolutionary history has not been considered. Intraspecific variation is a primary determinant of species vulnerability to climate change, with implications for global patterns of impacts of ongoing warming. Using published critical thermal maximum (CTmax) data on 203 fish species, we found that intraspecific variation in upper thermal tolerance varies according to a species’ latitude and evolutionary history. Overall, tropical species show a lower intraspecific variation in thermal tolerance than temperate species. Notably, freshwater tropical species have a lower variation in tolerance than freshwater temperate species, which implies increased vulnerability to impacts of thermal stress. The extent of variation in CTmax among fish species has a strong phylogenetic signal, which may indicate a constraint on evolvability to rising temperatures in tropical fishes. That is, in addition to living closer to their upper thermal limits, tropical species may have higher sensitivity and lower adaptability to global warming compared to temperate counterparts. This is evidence that freshwater tropical fish communities, worldwide, are especially vulnerable to ongoing climate change.

scholarly journals Functional Role of Extrafloral Nectar in Boreal Forest Ecosystems under Climate Change

Forests ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jarmo Holopainen ◽  
James Blande ◽  
Jouni Sorvari
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Boreal Forest ◽  
Plant Species ◽  
Tree Species ◽  
Extrafloral Nectar ◽  
Main Role ◽  
Ant Communities ◽  
Carbohydrate Source ◽  
Pest Outbreaks ◽  
Aphid Honeydew

Carbohydrate-rich extrafloral nectar (EFN) is produced in nectaries on the leaves, stipules, and stems of plants and provides a significant energy source for ants and other plant mutualists outside of the flowering period. Our review of literature on EFN indicates that only a few forest plant species in cool boreal environments bear EFN-producing nectaries and that EFN production in many boreal and subarctic plant species is poorly studied. Boreal forest, the world’s largest land biome, is dominated by coniferous trees, which, like most gymnosperms, do not produce EFN. Notably, common deciduous tree species that can be dominant in boreal forest stands, such as Betula and Alnus species, do not produce EFN, while Prunus and Populus species are the most important EFN-producing tree species. EFN together with aphid honeydew is known to play a main role in shaping ant communities. Ants are considered to be keystone species in mixed and conifer-dominated boreal and mountain forests because they transfer a significant amount of carbon from the canopy to the soil. Our review suggests that in boreal forests aphid honeydew is a more important carbohydrate source for ants than in many warmer ecosystems and that EFN-bearing plant species might not have a competitive advantage against herbivores. However, this hypothesis needs to be tested in the future. Warming of northern ecosystems under climate change might drastically promote the invasion of many EFN-producing plants and the associated insect species that consume EFN as their major carbohydrate source. This may result in substantial changes in the diet preferences of ant communities, the preventative roles of ants against insect pest outbreaks, and the ecosystem services they provide. However, wood ants have adapted to using tree sap that leaks from bark cracks in spring, which may mitigate the effects of improved EFN availability.

scholarly journals Interpreting common garden studies to understand cueing mechanisms of spring leafing phenology in temperate and boreal tree species

Silva Fennica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Salk
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Tree Species ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Common Garden ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Climate Change Responses ◽  
Critical Photoperiod ◽  
Leafing Phenology

Trees are particularly susceptible to climate change due to their long lives and slow dispersal. However, trees can adjust the timing of their growing season in response to weather conditions without evolutionary change or long-distance migration. This makes understanding phenological cueing mechanisms a critical task to forecast climate change impacts on forests. Because of slow data accumulation, unconventional and repurposed information is valuable in the study of phenology. Here, I develop and use a framework to interpret what phenological patterns among provenances of a species in a common garden reveal about their leafing cues, and potential climate change responses. Species whose high elevation/latitude provenances leaf first likely have little chilling requirement, or for latitude gradients only, a critical photoperiod cue met relatively early in the season. Species with low latitude/elevation origins leafing first have stronger controls against premature leafing; I argue that these species are likely less phenologically flexible in responding to climate change. Among published studies, the low to high order is predominant among frost-sensitive ring-porous species. Narrow-xylemed species show nearly all possible patterns, sometimes with strong contrasts even within genera for both conifers and angiosperms. Some also show complex patterns, indicating multiple mechanisms at work, and a few are largely undifferentiated across broad latitude gradients, suggesting phenotypic plasticity to a warmer climate. These results provide valuable evidence on which temperate and boreal tree species are most likely to adjust in place to climate change, and provide a framework for interpreting historic or newly-planted common garden studies of phenology.

scholarly journals Climate change effects on above- and below-ground interactions in a dryland ecosystem

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1606) ◽  
pp. 3115-3124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adela González-Megías ◽  
Rosa Menéndez
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Plant Traits ◽  
Fruit Production ◽  
Early Summer ◽  
Trophic Levels ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Semiarid Region ◽  
Individual Species ◽  
Climate Change Effects ◽  
Below Ground

Individual species respond to climate change by altering their abundance, distribution and phenology. Less is known, however, about how climate change affects multitrophic interactions, and its consequences for food-web dynamics. Here, we investigate the effect of future changes in rainfall patterns on detritivore–plant–herbivore interactions in a semiarid region in southern Spain by experimentally manipulating rainfall intensity and frequency during late spring–early summer. Our results show that rain intensity changes the effect of below-ground detritivores on both plant traits and above-ground herbivore abundance. Enhanced rain altered the interaction between detritivores and plants affecting flower and fruit production, and also had a direct effect on fruit and seed set. Despite this finding, there was no net effect on plant reproductive output. This finding supports the idea that plants will be less affected by climatic changes than by other trophic levels. Enhanced rain also affected the interaction between detritivores and free-living herbivores. The effect, however, was apparent only for generalist and not for specialist herbivores, demonstrating a differential response to climate change within the same trophic level. The complex responses found in this study suggest that future climate change will affect trophic levels and their interactions differentially, making extrapolation from individual species' responses and from one ecosystem to another very difficult.

scholarly journals Adaptive capacity in the foundation tree species Populus fremontii: implications for resilience to climate change and non-native species invasion in the American Southwest

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin R Hultine ◽  
Gerard J Allan ◽  
Davis Blasini ◽  
Helen M Bothwell ◽  
Abraham Cadmus ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Tree Species ◽  
Native Species ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Functional Trait ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Trophic Levels ◽  
Populus Fremontii ◽  
Species Invasions ◽  
Southwestern Usa

Abstract Populus fremontii (Fremont cottonwood) is recognized as one of the most important foundation tree species in the southwestern USA and northern Mexico because of its ability to structure communities across multiple trophic levels, drive ecosystem processes and influence biodiversity via genetic-based functional trait variation. However, the areal extent of P. fremontii cover has declined dramatically over the last century due to the effects of surface water diversions, non-native species invasions and more recently climate change. Consequently, P. fremontii gallery forests are considered amongst the most threatened forest types in North America. In this paper, we unify four conceptual areas of genes to ecosystems research related to P. fremontii’s capacity to survive or even thrive under current and future environmental conditions: (i) hydraulic function related to canopy thermal regulation during heat waves; (ii) mycorrhizal mutualists in relation to resiliency to climate change and invasion by the non-native tree/shrub, Tamarix; (iii) phenotypic plasticity as a mechanism for coping with rapid changes in climate; and (iv) hybridization between P. fremontii and other closely related Populus species where enhanced vigour of hybrids may preserve the foundational capacity of Populus in the face of environmental change. We also discuss opportunities to scale these conceptual areas from genes to the ecosystem level via remote sensing. We anticipate that the exploration of these conceptual areas of research will facilitate solutions to climate change with a foundation species that is recognized as being critically important for biodiversity conservation and could serve as a model for adaptive management of arid regions in the southwestern USA and around the world.

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