Abstract
Widespread plants may provide natural models for how population processes change with temperature and other environmental variables and how they may respond to global change. Similar changes in temperature can occur along altitudinal and latitudinal gradients, but hardly any study has compared the effects of the two types of gradients. We studied populations of Anthyllis vulneraria along a latitudinal gradient from Central Europe to the range limit in the North and an altitudinal gradient in the Alps from 500 m to the altitudinal limit at 2500 m, both encompassing a change in annual mean temperature of c. 11.5 °C. Plant size and reproduction decreased, but plant density increased along both gradients, indicating higher recruitment and demographic compensation among vital rates. Our results support the view that demographic compensation may be common in widespread species in contrast to the predictions of the abundant centre model of biogeography. Variation in temperature along the gradients had the strongest effects on most population characteristics, followed by that in precipitation, solar radiation, and soil nutrients. The proportion of plants flowering, seed set and seed mass declined with latitude, while the large variation in these traits along the altitudinal gradient was not related to elevation and covarying environmental variables like annual mean temperature. This suggests that it will be more difficult to draw conclusions about the potential impacts of future climate warming on plant populations in mountains, because of the importance of small-scale variation in environmental conditions.
Highlights
Temperature is an important determinant of plant physiology and distribution (Woodward 1987; De Frenne et al 2013)
We address the following questions: (1) How do population characteristics of A. vulneraria vary along the two gradients and do altitude and latitude have different effects? (2) Which environmental variables in addition to temperature are important predictors of population characteristics along altitudinal and latitudinal gradients? (3) Are characteristics of the populations along both gradients in line with the predictions of the abundant centre model (ACM)?
We studied mean population traits of A. vulneraria along a latitudinal gradient that extended from the centre of the distribution of the species in Central Europe to its northern distributional margin, and along an altitudinal gradient that ranged from the lowlands to the altitudinal limit of the species in the Alps
Summary
Temperature is an important determinant of plant physiology and distribution (Woodward 1987; De Frenne et al 2013). Studies of population traits along gradients of altitude and latitude with comparable changes in temperature provide an opportunity to study the influence of temperature and other environmental factors on plant population characteristics and structure. The study of natural variation in ecologically important traits is crucial to further increase our knowledge of the mechanisms involved in the distribution and abundance of plant species (Jump et al 2009). An improved understanding of how climatic conditions influence plants is important for assessing the response of plants to global change and
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