Abstract
Summary As climate change transforms seasonal patterns of temperature and precipitation, germination success at marginal temperatures will become critical for the long‐term persistence of many plant species and communities. If populations vary in their environmental sensitivity to marginal temperatures across a species’ geographical range, populations that respond better to future environmental extremes are likely to be critical for maintaining ecological resilience of the species.Using seeds from two to six populations for each of nine species of Mediterranean plants, we characterized patterns of among‐population variation in environmental sensitivity by quantifying genotype‐by‐environment interactions (G × E) for germination success at temperature extremes, and under two light regimes representing conditions below and above the soil surface.For eight of nine species tested at hot and cold marginal temperatures, we observed substantial among‐population variation in environmental sensitivity for germination success, and this often depended on the light treatment. Importantly, different populations often performed best at different environmental extremes.Our results demonstrate that ongoing changes in temperature regime will affect the phenology, fitness, and demography of different populations within the same species differently. We show that quantifying patterns of G × E for multiple populations, and understanding how such patterns arise, can test mechanisms that promote ecological resilience.
Highlights
Investigating how and when populations can persist in the face of ongoing rapid climate change is critical for understanding the resilience of ecological communities (Parmesan, 2006; Shaw & Etterson, 2012)
Ecological resilience is likely to increase if different populations vary in their responses to environmental variation, and some populations are more likely to persist than others
Quantifying patterns of population variation in environmental sensitivity for multiple species and key ecological traits can help to identify whether variation among populations of a species can increase the ecological resilience the species in response to climate change (Kimball et al, 2010; Cochrane et al, 2015; Barga et al, 2017)
Summary
Investigating how and when populations can persist in the face of ongoing rapid climate change is critical for understanding the resilience of ecological communities (Parmesan, 2006; Shaw & Etterson, 2012). Ecological resilience is likely to increase if different populations vary in their responses to environmental variation, and some populations are more likely to persist than others. Such persistence will likely require rapid changes in key life history traits, as shown by shifts to earlier spring growth in deciduous trees (Chmielewski & Rotzer, 2001) and earlier breeding date in birds (Charmantier et al, 2008). Quantifying G 9 E in laboratory experiments, allows us to to directly test for among-population variation in the response to extreme temperatures and identify populations with high relative performance (and higher resilience) in response to climate change
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