Abstract
Mountains are plant biodiversity hotspots considered particularly vulnerable to multiple environmental changes. Here, we quantify population changes and range-shift dynamics along elevational gradients over the last three decades for c. two-thirds of the orchid species of the European Alps. Local extinctions were more likely for small populations, after habitat alteration, and predominated at the rear edge of species’ ranges. Except for the most thermophilic species and wetland specialists, population density decreased over time. Declines were more pronounced for rear-edge populations, possibly due to multiple pressures such as climate warming, habitat alteration, and mismatched ecological interactions. Besides these demographic trends, different species exhibited idiosyncratic range shifts with more than 50% of the species lagging behind climate warming. Our study highlights the importance of long-term monitoring of populations and range distributions at fine spatial resolution to be able to fully understand the consequences of global change for orchids.
Highlights
Mountains are plant biodiversity hotspots considered vulnerable to multiple environmental changes
There is growing evidence that range shifts can lag behind climate change for several decades due to the ability of plants to persist under unfavourable conditions, dispersal limitation or lack of suitable habitats[5,6,7]
Previous research has mostly focussed on population dynamics at mountain tops, where warm-adapted species are expanding their distributions but cold-adapted species tend to decline in abundance or to go extinct due to climate warming[12]
Summary
Mountains are plant biodiversity hotspots considered vulnerable to multiple environmental changes. Declines were more pronounced for rear-edge populations, possibly due to multiple pressures such as climate warming, habitat alteration, and mismatched ecological interactions. Besides these demographic trends, different species exhibited idiosyncratic range shifts with more than 50% of the species lagging behind climate warming. There is an urgent need to consider the dynamics of species at the rear, low-elevation edge of their distributions[13,14], where the pressures of global change are likely to be stronger and the effects of climate warming are less predictable due to the cooccurrence of multiple drivers of plant distribution[15]. Mountain ecosystems have experienced rapid habitat transformations such as forest expansion, increased urbanization and invasion of exotic species[2,16], with potentially negative consequences for resident plant communities
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