Climate change and invasion may synergistically affect native plant reproduction.

Abstract

Global change drivers can interact in synergistic ways, yet the interactive effect of global change drivers, such as climatic warming and species invasions, on plant pollination are poorly represented in experimental studies. We paired manipulative experiments to probe two mechanistic pathways through which plant invasion and warming may alter phenology and reproduction of native plant species. In the first, we tested how experimental warming (+1.7°C) modulated flowering phenology and how this affected flowering overlap between a native plant (Dracophyllum subulatum) and an invasive plant (Calluna vulgaris L.). In the second experiment, we explored how variation in the ratio of native to invasive flowers, and the overall quantity of resources in a floral patch, affected the reproduction of the native species. We hypothesized that the flowering overlap of native and invasive plants would be altered by warming, given that invading plants typically exhibit greater phenological plasticity than native plants. Further, we hypothesized that pollination of native plant flowers would decrease in floral patches dominated by invasive plant flowers, but that this effect would depend on total floral density in the patch. As predicted, the invasive plant had a stronger phenological response to experimental warming than the native plant, resulting in increased flowering overlap between the native the invasive plants. There was a four-fold increase in the number of native flowers co-flowering with high densities of invasive flowers suggesting native plant competition for pollinators with invasive plants under a warmed climate. In the second experiment, we found depressed seed masses of the native species in high density floral patches that were dominated by invasive flowers relative to high density floral patches dominated by native flowers. At low floral densities, seed mass of native plants was unaffected by invasion. Together, these results demonstrate that by increasing their phenological overlap, warming may enhance the magnitude of existing competition for pollination exerted by an invasive plant on a native plant, particularly in plant patches with high floral density. Our results illustrate a novel pathway through which global change drivers can operate synergistically to alter an important ecosystem service: pollination.