Grazing effects on intraspecific trait variability vary with changing precipitation patterns in Mongolian rangelands

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • Birgit Lang
  • Julian Ahlborn
  • Munkhzuul Oyunbileg
  • Anna Geiger
  • Henrik von Wehrden
  • Karsten Wesche
  • Batlai Oyuntsetseg
  • Christine Roemermann
Functional traits are proxies for plant physiology and performance, which do not only differ between species but also within species. In this work, we hypothesized that (a) with increasing precipitation, the percentage of focal species which significantly respond to changes in grazing intensity increases, while under dry conditions, climate-induced stress is so high that plant species hardly respond to any changes in grazing intensity and that (b) the magnitude with which species change their trait values in response to grazing, reflected by coefficients of variation (CVs), increases with increasing precipitation. Chosen plant traits were canopy height, plant width, specific leaf area (SLA), chlorophyll fluorescence, performance index, stomatal pore area index (SPI), and individual aboveground biomass of 15 species along a precipitation gradient with different grazing intensities in Mongolian rangelands. We used linear models for each trait to assess whether the percentage of species that respond to grazing changes along the precipitation gradient. To test the second hypothesis, we assessed the magnitude of intraspecific trait variability (ITV) response to grazing, per species, trait, and precipitation level by calculating CVs across the different grazing intensities. ITV was most prominent for SLA and SPI under highest precipitation, confirming our first hypothesis. Accordingly, CVs of canopy height, SPI, and SLA increased with increasing precipitation, partly confirming our second hypothesis. CVs of the species over all traits increased with increasing precipitation only for three species. This study shows that it remains challenging to predict how plant performance will shift under changing environmental conditions based on their traits alone. In this context, the implications for the use of community-weighted mean trait values are discussed, as not only species abundances change in response to changing environmental conditions, but also values of traits considerably change. Including this aspect in further studies will improve our understanding of processes acting within and among communities.
Original languageEnglish
JournalEcology and Evolution
Volume10
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)678-691
Number of pages14
ISSN2045-7758
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.01.2020

Bibliographical note

The authors would like to thank Ganbud Yeruultkhuyag for his persistent commitment as a field assistant. We are grateful to all cooperating scientists who helped with the coordination and organization of the field work. We also thank Janin Naumann, Lauren Leib, and Elke Kirsten for practical assistance and technical support, Emma Jardine for language editing, and two anonymous reviewers and the editor for valuables comments. This work was funded by the German Science Foundation DFG (RO 3842/3‐1 | WE 2601/8‐1 | WE 5297/3‐1).

    Research areas

  • Ecosystems Research - environmental gradients, grasslands, intraspecific trait variability, land-use, rainfall, steppes

Documents

DOI

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Monitoring of microbially mediated corrosion and scaling processes using redox potential measurements
  2. Leverage points 2019
  3. Tree diversity and mycorrhizal type co-determine multitrophic ecosystem functions
  4. Ideas, Complexity, and Innovation
  5. Exploiting ConvNet diversity for flooding identification
  6. The relationship between values and knowledge in visioning for landscape management
  7. Does isolation affect phenotypic variability and fluctuating asymmetry in the endangered Red Apollo?
  8. Material utilization of organic residues
  9. How can Environmental Management contribute to Shareholder Value?
  10. Construct Clean-Up in Proactivity Research
  11. Species loss due to nutrient addition increases with spatial scale in global grasslands
  12. An optimal minimum phase approximating PD regulator for robust control of a throttle plate
  13. Micro situations and macro structures
  14. Feld oder Assemblage?
  15. Hydrograph analysis and basef low separation
  16. The interaction of ecological norm orientation and external factors in the domain of travel mode choice behavior
  17. On kites, comets, and stars. Sums of eigenvector coefficients in (molecular) graphs.
  18. Conditionality of EU funds: an instrument to enforce EU fundamental values?
  19. Video Game Microtransactions & Loot Boxes - An Empirical Study on the Effectiveness of Social Responsibility Measures
  20. Learning in participatory environmental governance – its antecedents and effects. Findings from a case survey meta-analysis
  21. Exploring intrinsic, instrumental and relational values for sustainable management of social-ecological systems
  22. Determinants of fair own wage perceptions
  23. Timing, fragmentation of work and income inequality
  24. Conceptual and procedural mathematical knowledge of beginning mathematics majors and preservice teachers
  25. Daniel Fiott (ed.), The csdp in 2020: The EU’s legacy and ambition in security and defence
  26. Self-efficacy, self-regulation and mathematics performance of competitive junior rowers vs. regular students
  27. Case Study Analysis
  28. Unpacking the nonlinear effect of self-efficacy in entrepreneurship
  29. Cognitive aspects of noise sensitivity