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. 2022 Oct;25(10):2156-2166.
doi: 10.1111/ele.14087. Epub 2022 Aug 26.

Ecological lags govern the pace and outcome of plant community responses to 21st-century climate change

Sebastián Block  1   2 , Marc-Jacques Maechler  1 , Jacob I Levine  2 , Jake M Alexander  1 , Loïc Pellissier  3   4 , Jonathan M Levine  2
Affiliations

Ecological lags govern the pace and outcome of plant community responses to 21st-century climate change

Sebastián Block et al. Ecol Lett. 2022 Oct.

Abstract

Forecasting the trajectories of species assemblages in response to ongoing climate change requires quantifying the time lags in the demographic and ecological processes through which climate impacts species' abundances. Since experimental climate manipulations are typically abrupt, the observed species responses may not match their responses to gradual climate change. We addressed this problem by transplanting alpine grassland turfs to lower elevations, recording species' demographic responses to climate and competition, and using these data to parameterise community dynamics models forced by scenarios of gradual climate change. We found that shifts in community structure following an abrupt climate manipulation were not simply accelerated versions of shifts expected under gradual warming, as the former missed the transient rise of species benefiting from moderate warming. Time lags in demography and species interactions controlled the pace and trajectory of changing species' abundances under simulated 21st-century climate change, and thereby prevented immediate diversity loss.

Keywords: alpine plants; competition; demography; disequilibrium dynamics; thermophilisation; time lags; transient dynamics; transplant experiment.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Trajectories of alpine plant communities transplanted to different elevations in the Swiss Alps to simulate climate change. The communities originated from a site at 2050 m and were transplanted to sites at (a) 2000 m, (b) 1600 m, (c) 1400 m or (d) 1000 m (which correspond to approximately 0, 2.2, 3.3 and 5.5°C of warming respectively). Panels show a Principal Coordinates Analysis ordination based on Euclidean distances of all observed and simulated turfs from 2017 to 2020, including only the 11 taxa for which models adequately predicted cover changes. The arrows show the observed (black) and median predicted (grey) changes in community structure of each turf. Grey lines centred on the grey arrowheads display uncertainty in the predicted community changes, showing the 5% and 95% quantiles across 20 simulations for each principal component axis. In panel D, the thicker green arrows starting from the origin show the taxa for which the first two ordinations axes explain more than 90% of their cover variation through time. The inset plots within each panel show the mean observed (black) and predicted (grey) Shannon diversity across the ten turfs transplanted to each elevation; vertical lines show 95% Wald confidence intervals.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Trajectories of alpine plant community responses to contrasting climate change scenarios for the 21st century. (a) Depending on future greenhouse gas emissions, this region of the Alps could experience contrasting climate futures, warming from 0.5 (in RCP 2.6, solid line) to 2.3 (in RCP 4.5, dashed line) and potentially even 4.8°C (in RCP 8.5, dotted line) by the end of the century relative to the experimental period (2017–2020). (b) Increases in temperature under the contrasting climate change scenarios led to non‐monotonic changes in the diversity of the simulated alpine community. (c) Principal coordinates ordination based on Euclidean distances showing the trajectory of simulated alpine communities under the different climate change scenarios between years 2017 and 2098 (each point corresponds to a year in one scenario, in 3‐year time steps to reduce clutter). The grey arrows are vectors of taxa for which ordination axes explained more than 90% of variation in abundance through time. Panels (b) and (c) show the median of 20 simulated trajectories. The 5% and 95% quantiles are shown in panel (b) and ten runs of the simulations generating panel (c) are shown Figure S5.4.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Cover dynamics of alpine plant species under contrasting climate change scenarios RCP 2.6 (cyan), RCP 4.5 (orange) and RCP 8.5 (red). Lines show the natural logarithm of the sum of the cover of all individuals in each year of the climate change simulations. The trajectories of summer temperatures in the region under these scenarios are shown in Figure 2a. For scenario RCP 4.5, dotted lines show dynamics with a reduced influence of ecological lags, while dashed lines show dynamics following a stepwise change in climate to conditions expected by the end of the century (mean conditions between 2088 and 2098). Lines show the median of 20 simulated trajectories, and shading indicates the 5% and 95% quantiles.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Alpine community responses to gradual versus stepwise climate change. (a) Principal coordinates analysis ordination based on Euclidean distances showing the trajectory of simulated alpine communities under stepwise (dashed line) versus gradual climate change (RCP 4.5), with either full (solid line) or reduced (dotted line) influence of ecological lags. Each point corresponds to a year. The grey arrows are vectors of taxa for which ordination axes explained more than 90% of variation in abundance through time. (b) Trajectories of Shannon diversity based on taxa's total cover in simulated communities. Panels show the median of 20 simulated trajectories. Ten runs of the simulations generating panel A are shown in Figure S5.4, and 5% and 95% quantiles are shown with shading in panel (b).
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