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Longer growing seasons shift grassland vegetation towards more-productive species

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 865–868 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Despite advances in plant functional ecology that provide a framework for predicting the responses of vegetation to environmental change1,2,3, links between plant functional strategies and elevated temperatures are poorly understood3,4,5. Here, we analyse the response of a species-rich grassland in northern England to two decades of temperature and rainfall manipulations in the context of the functional attributes of 21 coexisting species that represent a large array of resource-use strategies. Three principal traits, including body size (canopy height), tissue investment (leaf construction cost), and seed size, varied independently across species and reflect tradeoffs associated with competitiveness, stress tolerance, and colonization ability. Unlike past studies5,6,7, our results reveal a strong association between functional traits and temperature regime; species favoured by extended growing seasons have taller canopies and faster assimilation rates, which has come at the expense of those species of high tissue investment. This trait-warming association was three times higher in deep soils, suggesting species shifts have been strongly mediated by competition8. In contrast, vegetation shifts from rainfall manipulations have been associated only with tissue investment. Functional shifts towards faster growing species in response to warming may be responsible for a marginal increase in productivity in a system that was assumed to be nutrient-limited9.

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Figure 1: Association of species’ traits (black arrows) and environmental treatments (coloured arrows) as mediated by species abundances (symbols) in a co-inertia (RLQ) analysis of environment (R), community (L), and trait (Q) matrices.
Figure 2: Maximum canopy height (left panels) and leaf construction cost (right panels) predict species’ responses to heat and water manipulations, respectively, for both shallow (top panels) and deep (bottom panels) microsites.
Figure 3: Associations of species traits with climate responses, as estimated in a Bayesian phylogenetic regression accounting for the random effects of species and the joint effects of the three primary traits from multivariate analysis.
Figure 4: Standing biomass across main climate treatments in 2013, by soil depth class.

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Acknowledgements

The Buxton Climate Change Impacts Laboratory is funded by the US National Science Foundation (DEB 1242529). The authors gratefully acknowledge technical assistance from M. Heberling and manuscript comments of A. Moles.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Syracuse University, 107 College Place, Syracuse, New York 13244, USA

    Jason D. Fridley, Josh S. Lynn & A. P. Askew

  2. Department of Animal & Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK

    J. P. Grime

Authors
  1. Jason D. Fridley
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  2. Josh S. Lynn
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  3. J. P. Grime
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  4. A. P. Askew
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Contributions

J.D.F. and J.P.G. designed the study with input from A.P.A.; A.P.A. and J.P.G. maintained the climate experiment; J.D.F. and J.S.L. conducted the greenhouse trait assays; J.P.G. and J.D.F. performed plot surveys; A.P.A. and J.P.G. performed the biomass survey; and J.D.F. analysed the data and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Jason D. Fridley.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Fridley, J., Lynn, J., Grime, J. et al. Longer growing seasons shift grassland vegetation towards more-productive species. Nature Clim Change 6, 865–868 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3032

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