Abstract
Research has shown that warming and drought change plant phenolics. However, much of this work has centered on the effects of individual abiotic stressors on single plant species rather than the concurrent effects of multiple stressors at the plant community level. To address this gap, we manipulated rainfall and air temperature to test for their individual and interactive effects on the expression of leaf phenolics at the community level for annual plant species occurring in two habitat types (under oak tree canopies or in open grasslands) in a Mediterranean savanna. We found that augmented temperature had a significant positive effect on the community-weighted mean of total phenolics whereas reduced rainfall had no effect. In addition, we found no evidence of interactive effects between climatic stressors and these patterns remained consistent across habitat types. Overall, this study points at increasing efforts to investigate the linkages between climate change and community-level shifts in plant secondary chemistry.
Highlights
Research has shown that warming and drought change plant phenolics
While much of this work has focused on the effects of individual abiotic stressors on plant phenolics, few studies have tested the effects of multiple stressors simultaneously[15]
The warming treatment exerted a significant effect on plant chemistry (Table 1, Fig. 1), with plots subjected to warming exhibiting a ca. 24% greater C WMphenolics mean value (36.82 ± 2.59 mg g−1 d.w.) compared to those found under ambient temperature (29.63 ± 2.56 mg g−1 d.w.) (Table 1, Fig. 1)
Summary
Much of this work has centered on the effects of individual abiotic stressors on single plant species rather than the concurrent effects of multiple stressors at the plant community level To address this gap, we manipulated rainfall and air temperature to test for their individual and interactive effects on the expression of leaf phenolics at the community level for annual plant species occurring in two habitat types (under oak tree canopies or in open grasslands) in a Mediterranean savanna. We individually manipulated rainfall (ambient vs reduced rainfall) and air temperature (ambient vs increased temperature) to test for their individual as well as interactive effects on the expression of leaf phenolics at the community level We achieved this by computing community-weighted means for total phenolics. We seek to improve current understanding of how climate change stressors shape the secondary chemistry of plant communities
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