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Novel competitors shape species’ responses to climate change

Abstract

Understanding how species respond to climate change is critical for forecasting the future dynamics and distribution of pests, diseases and biological diversity1,2,3. Although ecologists have long acknowledged species’ direct physiological and demographic responses to climate, more recent work suggests that these direct responses can be overwhelmed by indirect effects mediated via other interacting community members2,3,4,5,6,7. Theory suggests that some of the most dramatic impacts of community change will probably arise through the assembly of novel species combinations after asynchronous migrations with climate8,9,10. Empirical tests of this prediction are rare, as existing work focuses on the effects of changing interactions between competitors that co-occur today7,11,12,13,14,15. To explore how species’ responses to climate warming depend on how their competitors migrate to track climate, we transplanted alpine plant species and intact plant communities along a climate gradient in the Swiss Alps. Here we show that when alpine plants were transplanted to warmer climates to simulate a migration failure, their performance was strongly reduced by novel competitors that could migrate upwards from lower elevation; these effects generally exceeded the impact of warming on competition with current competitors. In contrast, when we grew the focal plants under their current climate to simulate climate tracking, a shift in the competitive environment to novel high-elevation competitors had little to no effect. This asymmetry in the importance of changing competitor identity at the leading versus trailing range edges is best explained by the degree of functional similarity between current and novel competitors. We conclude that accounting for novel competitive interactions may be essential to predict species’ responses to climate change accurately.

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Figure 1: Scenarios for the competition experienced by a focal alpine plant following climate warming.
Figure 2: Effect of novel competitors on alpine plant performance.
Figure 3: Functional and floristic community composition.
Figure 4: The response of four alpine species to competition.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M.-J. Mächler, D. Righetti, C. Schmid, P. Stettler, R. Guidon, A. Vitra, S. Minneboo, J. Leuenberger and other members of the Plant Ecology group for assistance with field work, and the community of Haldenstein for providing field sites. S. Güsewell provided statistical advice. We thank P. Adler, J. HilleRisLambers and the Plant Ecology group for reading and commenting on the manuscript. ETH Zurich funding to the Plant Ecology group supported the project.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

All authors designed the study, assisted with fieldwork and wrote the paper. J.M.A. analysed the data and wrote the first draft.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jake M. Alexander.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Figure 1 Daily mean temperature during the study at the three experimental sites.

Extended Data Figure 2 Effect of novel competitors on alpine plant biomass in 2013.

Focal species were exposed to different competition scenarios, depending on whether they and/or their surrounding community would either migrate, or fail to migrate, following climate warming (see Fig. 1). Shown are means (s.e.m.) of the raw data, and likelihood ratio tests (d.f. = 1, n = 182 (a) and 221 (b), n = 10 experimental units (blocks) per site) of the novel competitor effect at each experimental site (in the main model, across all species and sites: novel competitor × site interaction χ2 = 8.42, d.f. = 1, P = 0.004; novel competitor × site × species interaction χ2 = 3.17, d.f. = 3, P = 0.367).

Extended Data Figure 3 Biomass in 2014 of four alpine plant species growing on soils without competition.

Plants grew under a warmer climate (a, at 1,400 m) or under their current climate (b, at 2,000 m), either on soil from that site, or on soil from a site 600 m higher up the mountain slope. Shown are means (s.e.m.) of the raw data (total n = 314).

Extended Data Figure 4 Effect of soil biota on plant biomass.

Plants grew on soils inoculated with soil biota from 1,400 or 2,000 m. Plants grew better with soil biota originating from lower elevation, but this effect was shared across species from 2,000 m (in yellow, focal species from the field experiment) and 1,400 m (orange). Thus how fast the 1,400 m soil biota migrate or rise to dominance at higher elevation in the future may not strongly determine the relative performance of 1,400 and 2,000 m plants. Shown are means (s.e.m.) of standardized plant biomass. For statistics and n see Extended Data Table 3.

Extended Data Figure 5 Above-ground community biomass.

Standing biomass was estimated in late summer 2013 (a) and 2014 (b) in the plant communities from sites at 1,400, 2,000 and 2,600 m (mean ± s.e.m., n = 10 per community and site), growing in sites at either 1,400 m, 2,000 m or 2,600 m.

Extended Data Table 1 Environmental characteristics of the three study sites
Extended Data Table 2 Characteristics of the focal species
Extended Data Table 3 Statistical analysis of the effects of soil biota on plant biomass
Extended Data Table 4 Analysis of herbivory on four alpine plant species

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Alexander, J., Diez, J. & Levine, J. Novel competitors shape species’ responses to climate change. Nature 525, 515–518 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14952

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