TY - JOUR

T1 - Colonization and extinction lags drive non-linear responses to warming in mountain plant communities across the Northern Hemisphere

AU - Bektaş, Billur

AU - Chisholm, Chelsea

AU - Egelkraut, Dagmar

AU - Lynn, Joshua

AU - Block, Sebastián

AU - Deola, Thomas

AU - Dommanget, Fanny

AU - Enquist, Brian J.

AU - Goldberg, Deborah E.

AU - Haider, Sylvia

AU - Halbritter, Aud H.

AU - He, Yongtao

AU - Jaunatre, Renaud

AU - Jentsch, Anke

AU - Klanderud, Kari

AU - Kardol, Paul

AU - Lachmuth, Susanne

AU - Loucougaray, Gregory

AU - Münkemüller, Tamara

AU - Niedrist, Georg

AU - Nomoto, Hanna

AU - Seltzer, Lorah

AU - Paul Töpper, Joachim

AU - Rew, Lisa J.

AU - Seipel, Tim

AU - Shah, Manzoor A.

AU - James Telford, Richard

AU - Walker, Tom W.N.

AU - Wang, Shiping

AU - Wardle, David A.

AU - Wolff, Peter

AU - Yang, Yan

AU - Vandvik, Vigdis

AU - Alexander, Jake M.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2024 The Author(s). Ecography published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Nordic Society Oikos.

PY - 2024/11/20

Y1 - 2024/11/20

N2 - Global warming is changing plant communities due to the arrival of new species from warmer regions and declining abundance of cold-adapted species. However, experimentally testing predictions about trajectories and rates of community change is challenging because we normally lack an expectation for future community composition, and most warming experiments fail to incorporate colonization by novel species. To address these issues, we analyzed data from 44 whole-community transplant experiments along 22 elevational gradients across the Northern Hemisphere. In these experiments, high-elevation communities were transplanted to lower elevations to simulate warming, while also removing dispersal barriers for lower-elevation species to establish. We quantified the extent and pace at which warmed high-elevation communities shifted towards the taxonomic composition of lower elevation communities. High-elevation plant communities converged towards the composition of low-elevation communities, with higher rates under stronger experimental warming. Strong community shifts occurred in the first year after transplantation then slowed over time, such that communities remained distinct from both origin and destination control by the end of the experimental periods (3-9 years). Changes were driven to a similar extent by both new species colonization and abundance shifts of high-elevation species, but with substantial variation across experiments that could be partly explained by the magnitude and duration of experimental warming, plot size and functional traits. Our macroecological approach reveals that while warmed high-elevation communities increasingly resemble communities at lower elevations today, the slow pace of taxonomic shifts implies considerable colonization and extinction lags, where a novel taxonomic composition of both low- and high-elevation species could coexist for long periods of time. The important contribution of the colonizing species to community change also indicates that once dispersal barriers are overcome, warmed high-elevation communities are vulnerable to encroachment from lower elevation species.

AB - Global warming is changing plant communities due to the arrival of new species from warmer regions and declining abundance of cold-adapted species. However, experimentally testing predictions about trajectories and rates of community change is challenging because we normally lack an expectation for future community composition, and most warming experiments fail to incorporate colonization by novel species. To address these issues, we analyzed data from 44 whole-community transplant experiments along 22 elevational gradients across the Northern Hemisphere. In these experiments, high-elevation communities were transplanted to lower elevations to simulate warming, while also removing dispersal barriers for lower-elevation species to establish. We quantified the extent and pace at which warmed high-elevation communities shifted towards the taxonomic composition of lower elevation communities. High-elevation plant communities converged towards the composition of low-elevation communities, with higher rates under stronger experimental warming. Strong community shifts occurred in the first year after transplantation then slowed over time, such that communities remained distinct from both origin and destination control by the end of the experimental periods (3-9 years). Changes were driven to a similar extent by both new species colonization and abundance shifts of high-elevation species, but with substantial variation across experiments that could be partly explained by the magnitude and duration of experimental warming, plot size and functional traits. Our macroecological approach reveals that while warmed high-elevation communities increasingly resemble communities at lower elevations today, the slow pace of taxonomic shifts implies considerable colonization and extinction lags, where a novel taxonomic composition of both low- and high-elevation species could coexist for long periods of time. The important contribution of the colonizing species to community change also indicates that once dispersal barriers are overcome, warmed high-elevation communities are vulnerable to encroachment from lower elevation species.

KW - Alpine plants

KW - climate warming

KW - elevation gradient

KW - macroecology

KW - transplant experiment

KW - warming experiment

KW - Biology

KW - Ecosystems Research

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85209784109&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/49afb2ef-f0db-3e40-8442-63f405e1a00e/

U2 - 10.1111/ecog.07378

DO - 10.1111/ecog.07378

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85209784109

JO - Ecography

JF - Ecography

SN - 0906-7590

M1 - e07378

ER -