What’s next for the New Zealand dairy feed-base? Learnings from climate analogues

• The reviewed literature suggests that the likely main impact of climate change on New Zealand dairy systems will be a reduction in total annual rainfall and increased inter- and intra-season rainfall and associated soil moisture variability.• Future climate analogues for New Zealand’s current dairying regions are provided from both within New Zealand and Australia.• Future climate scenarios for New Zealand dairy systems can be found within New Zealand with the exception of Northland whose most similar climate analogue is in Australia.• A conceptual framework to increase the boundaries of the ‘zone of system control’ (ZSC) by the farmer is provided here for the first time. The ZSC is defined as the optimal range for a critical input (rainfall or soil moisture in this case) where productive and profitable farming can occur.• Risk of failure increases as the frequency inputs fall above (excess) or below (deficit) the ZSC. Options to reduce the risk of system failure (outside of this zone) are provided with emphasis on soil moisture.• This framework could be used to focus future research and development investment to make the New Zealand and Australian dairy industries more resilient to climate change.

Diversity in nonlinear responses to soil moisture shapes evolutionary constraints in Brachypodium

Water availability is perhaps the greatest environmental determinant of plant yield and fitness. However, our understanding of plant-water relations is limited because—like many studies of organism-environment interaction—it is primarily informed by experiments considering performance at two discrete levels—wet and dry—rather than as a continuously varying environmental gradient. Here, we used experimental and statistical methods based on function-valued traits to explore genetic variation in responses to a continuous soil moisture gradient in physiological and morphological traits among 10 genotypes across two species of the model grass genus Brachypodium. We find that most traits exhibit significant genetic variation and nonlinear responses to soil moisture variability. We also observe differences in the shape of these nonlinear responses between traits and genotypes. Emergent phenomena arise from this variation including changes in trait correlations and evolutionary constraints as a function of soil moisture. Our results point to the importance of considering diversity in nonlinear organism-environment relationships to understand plastic and evolutionary responses to changing climates.

ECOLOGICAL NICHE OF COMMELINA COMMUNIS (COMMELINACEAE) IN THE PRIMORYE TERRITORY (THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST)

On the example of Commelina communis L. (Commelinaceae), the typical weed in the south of the Russian Far East, it has been demonstrated that the invasive activity of species significantly increases in conditions of the Pacific monsoon climate. The range of the most important ecological factors (humidity, richness and salinity of soil, the soil texture as well as soil moisture variability) in the Pacific coast is wider than in continental areas. It is quite possible that in the south of Primorye Territory we have the northern part of the Commelina communis natural area of distribution.