Species climatic niche explains drought-induced die-off in a Mediterranean woody community
Sapes, Gerard (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Serra Díaz, Josep M. (Harvard Forest (Research facility))
Lloret Maya, Francisco (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Biologia Animal, de Biologia Vegetal i d'Ecologia)

Date:	2017
Abstract:	During the last decades, plant die-off has been reported worldwide as a result of increased frequency and intensity of extreme drought events. From a niche perspective, a species performance should decrease as the climatic conditions defining a drought event differ from those characterizing the species climatic niche (the average conditions experienced by the species). Species distribution models (SDMs) can potentially be used to test the link between species performance and their climatic niche by means of climatic suitability indexes. We studied the remaining green canopy of 18 woody species co-occurring in a Mediterranean shrubland from the central Iberian Peninsula that experienced a severe die-off following an extreme drought event. We found that the suitability of the climatic conditions estimated by SDMs strongly declined for all species during the extreme drought event. Species die-off was significantly explained by the decrease in climatic suitability during the event, estimated as the ratio between the historic and the extreme event climatic suitability. Species with high occupancy levels across the landscape exhibited higher die-off likely because (1) these species have short life-span and mortality would be compensated by later high recruitment or (2) populations of rare species may have experienced local adaptation to drier conditions. Our results indicate that extreme drought events can have a negative effect, even in shrubland communities living in arid environments. Also, we develop a new approach that connects population-level responses to species climatic niches through SDMs, and it can be applied to predict community responses to strong climatic variability, such as drought events.
Grants:	Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad CGL2015-67419-R Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad CGL2012-32965 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad CGL2009-08101 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2014/SGR-1491 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2014/SGR-453 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2009/SGR-00247
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Climatic niche ; Correlative niche models ; Defoliation ; Die-off ; Drought responses ; Extreme drought event ; Maxent ; Mediterranean ecosystems ; Niche-based models ; Shrubland ; Species distribution models
Published in:	Ecosphere, Vol. 8, issue 5 (May 2017) , e01833, ISSN 2150-8925

DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.1833

15 p, 2.1 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > Grupo de Investigación Métodos y Aplicaciones en Teledetección y Sistemas de Información Geográfica (GRUMETS)
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > CREAF (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles