Plant canopies promote climatic disequilibrium in Mediterranean recruit communities
Pérez Navarro, María Ángeles (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Lloret Maya, Francisco (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Biologia Animal, de Biologia Vegetal i d'Ecologia)
Molina-Venegas, Rafael (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
Alcántara, Julio M. (Universidad de Jaén)
Verdú, Miguel (Centro de Investigaciones Sobre Desertificación)

Date:	2024
Abstract:	Current rates of climate change are exceeding the capacity of many plant species to track climate, thus leading communities to be in disequilibrium with climatic conditions. Plant canopies can contribute to this disequilibrium by buffering macro-climatic conditions and sheltering poorly adapted species to the oncoming climate, particularly in their recruitment stages. Here we analyse differences in climatic disequilibrium between understorey and open ground woody plant recruits in 28 localities, covering more than 100,000 m2, across an elevation range embedding temperature and aridity gradients in the southern Iberian Peninsula. This study demonstrates higher climatic disequilibrium under canopies compared with open ground, supporting that plant canopies would affect future community climatic lags by allowing the recruitment of less arid-adapted species in warm and dry conditions, but also it endorse that canopies could favour warm-adapted species in extremely cold environments as mountain tops, thus pre-adapting communities living in these habitats to climate change.
Grants:	Agencia Estatal de Investigación RTI2018-099672-J-I00 Agencia Estatal de Investigación PID2020-113157GB-I00 Agencia Estatal de Investigación PID2020-115264RB-I00 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2021/SGR-00849
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:	Climate change ; Climatic bonus ; Climatic debt ; Climatic disequilibrium ; Climatic lag, establishment ; Facilitation ; Plant community assembly ; Recruit-canopy interactions ; Recruitment
Published in:	Ecology letters, Vol. 27, Issue 2 (February 2024) , art. e14391, ISSN 1461-0248

DOI: 10.1111/ele.14391
PMID: 38400769

13 p, 4.4 MB

The record appears in these collections:
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