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Snow is an important control of plant community functional composition in oroarctic tundra
- Source :
- Oecologia
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2019.
-
Abstract
- The functional composition of plant communities is a critical modulator of climate change impacts on ecosystems, but it is not a simple function of regional climate. In the Arctic tundra, where climate change is proceeding the most rapidly, communities have not shifted their trait composition as predicted by spatial temperature–trait relationships. Important causal pathways are thus missing from models of trait composition change. Here, we study causes of plant community functional variation in an oroarctic tundra landscape in Kilpisjärvi, Finland. We consider the community-weighted means of plant vegetative height, as well as two traits related to the leaf economic spectrum. Specifically, we model their responses to locally measured summer air temperature, snow conditions, and soil resource levels. For each of the traits, we also quantify the importance of intraspecific trait variation (ITV) for between-community functional differences and trait–environment matching. Our study shows that in a tundra landscape (1) snow is the most influential abiotic variable affecting functional composition, (2) vegetation height is under weak local environmental control, whereas leaf economics is under strong local environmental control, (3) the relative magnitude of ITV differs between traits, and (4) ITV is not very consequential for community-level trait–environment relationships. Our analyses highlight the importance of winter conditions for community functional composition in seasonal areas. We show that winter climate change can either amplify or counter the effects summer warming, depending on the trait. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s00442-019-04508-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
- Subjects :
- DYNAMICS
0106 biological sciences
IMAGE
Vegetative height
Climate change
NUTRIENT
Biology
TRAIT VARIATION
Intraspecific variation
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
Intraspecific competition
03 medical and health sciences
Snow
Ecosystem
Tundra
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Finland
030304 developmental biology
2. Zero hunger
Abiotic component
0303 health sciences
LDMC
Ecology
AVAILABILITY
Community Ecology–Original Research
Plant community
15. Life on land
Plants
13. Climate action
1181 Ecology, evolutionary biology
Trait
SLA
Functional traits
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 14321939 and 00298549
- Volume :
- 191
- Issue :
- 3
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Oecologia
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....5bede45ce501cfe4f976b005c0f633d9