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Early-melting snowpatch plant communities are transitioning into novel states
Snowpatch plant community distribution and composition are strongly tied to the duration of long-lasting snow cover in alpine areas; they are vulnerable to global climatic changes that result in warmer temperatures and longer growing seasons. We used a revisitation study to quantify early-melting sn...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10545709/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37783739 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-42808-5 |
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author | Morgan, John Walker, Zac |
author_facet | Morgan, John Walker, Zac |
author_sort | Morgan, John |
collection | PubMed |
description | Snowpatch plant community distribution and composition are strongly tied to the duration of long-lasting snow cover in alpine areas; they are vulnerable to global climatic changes that result in warmer temperatures and longer growing seasons. We used a revisitation study to quantify early-melting snowpatch floristic and functional diversity change in southern Australia, and document shrub size-class distributions over time to detect evidence for their encroachment into snowpatches, a key prediction with climatic change. Early-melting snowpatch vegetation has declined in areal extent, changed in species composition, and shrub and tussock grass cover has increased, but changes in functional trait diversity were less clear. Species gains, particularly by non-clonal species, accounted for most of the floristic change observed. Shrub recruitment was ongoing by most shrub species. Biotic differentiation is occurring; many early-melting snowpatches are transitioning to a novel state with changed composition and taller vegetation structure, but there is little evidence for species loss having occurred. Given enough time, however, the long-term loss of species is likely (i.e. biotic homogenisation) if taller shrubs outcompete short-statured snowpatch species. Our results provide evidence that this alpine ecosystem is forming a novel community with an uncertain future. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10545709 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-105457092023-10-04 Early-melting snowpatch plant communities are transitioning into novel states Morgan, John Walker, Zac Sci Rep Article Snowpatch plant community distribution and composition are strongly tied to the duration of long-lasting snow cover in alpine areas; they are vulnerable to global climatic changes that result in warmer temperatures and longer growing seasons. We used a revisitation study to quantify early-melting snowpatch floristic and functional diversity change in southern Australia, and document shrub size-class distributions over time to detect evidence for their encroachment into snowpatches, a key prediction with climatic change. Early-melting snowpatch vegetation has declined in areal extent, changed in species composition, and shrub and tussock grass cover has increased, but changes in functional trait diversity were less clear. Species gains, particularly by non-clonal species, accounted for most of the floristic change observed. Shrub recruitment was ongoing by most shrub species. Biotic differentiation is occurring; many early-melting snowpatches are transitioning to a novel state with changed composition and taller vegetation structure, but there is little evidence for species loss having occurred. Given enough time, however, the long-term loss of species is likely (i.e. biotic homogenisation) if taller shrubs outcompete short-statured snowpatch species. Our results provide evidence that this alpine ecosystem is forming a novel community with an uncertain future. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-10-02 /pmc/articles/PMC10545709/ /pubmed/37783739 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-42808-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Morgan, John Walker, Zac Early-melting snowpatch plant communities are transitioning into novel states |
title | Early-melting snowpatch plant communities are transitioning into novel states |
title_full | Early-melting snowpatch plant communities are transitioning into novel states |
title_fullStr | Early-melting snowpatch plant communities are transitioning into novel states |
title_full_unstemmed | Early-melting snowpatch plant communities are transitioning into novel states |
title_short | Early-melting snowpatch plant communities are transitioning into novel states |
title_sort | early-melting snowpatch plant communities are transitioning into novel states |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10545709/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37783739 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-42808-5 |
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