Cargando…

A multi-year experiment shows that lower precipitation predictability encourages plants’ early life stages and enhances population viability

Climate change is a key factor that may cause the extinction of species. The associated reduced weather predictability may alter the survival of plants, especially during their early life stages, when individuals are most fragile. While it is expected that extreme weather events will be highly detri...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: March-Salas, Martí, Fitze, Patrick S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6410692/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30867983
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6443
_version_ 1783402301848813568
author March-Salas, Martí
Fitze, Patrick S.
author_facet March-Salas, Martí
Fitze, Patrick S.
author_sort March-Salas, Martí
collection PubMed
description Climate change is a key factor that may cause the extinction of species. The associated reduced weather predictability may alter the survival of plants, especially during their early life stages, when individuals are most fragile. While it is expected that extreme weather events will be highly detrimental for species, the effects of more subtle environmental changes have been little considered. In a four-year experiment on two herbaceous plants, Papaver rhoeas and Onobrychis viciifolia, we manipulated the predictability of precipitation by changing the temporal correlation of precipitation events while maintaining average precipitation constant, leading to more and less predictable treatments. We assessed the effect of predictability on plant viability in terms of seedling emergence, survival, seed production, and population growth rate. We found greater seedling emergence, survival, and population growth for plants experiencing lower intra-seasonal predictability, but more so during early compared to late life stages. Since predictability levels were maintained across four generations, we have also tested whether descendants exhibited transgenerational responses to previous predictability conditions. In P. rhoeas, descendants had increased the seedling emergence compared to ancestors under both treatments, but more so under lower precipitation predictability. However, higher predictability in the late treatment induced higher survival in descendants, showing that these conditions may benefit long-term survival. This experiment highlights the ability of some plants to rapidly exploit environmental resources and increase their survival under less predictable conditions, especially during early life stages. Therefore, this study provides relevant evidence of the survival capacity of some species under current and future short-term environmental alterations.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6410692
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2019
publisher PeerJ Inc.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-64106922019-03-13 A multi-year experiment shows that lower precipitation predictability encourages plants’ early life stages and enhances population viability March-Salas, Martí Fitze, Patrick S. PeerJ Ecology Climate change is a key factor that may cause the extinction of species. The associated reduced weather predictability may alter the survival of plants, especially during their early life stages, when individuals are most fragile. While it is expected that extreme weather events will be highly detrimental for species, the effects of more subtle environmental changes have been little considered. In a four-year experiment on two herbaceous plants, Papaver rhoeas and Onobrychis viciifolia, we manipulated the predictability of precipitation by changing the temporal correlation of precipitation events while maintaining average precipitation constant, leading to more and less predictable treatments. We assessed the effect of predictability on plant viability in terms of seedling emergence, survival, seed production, and population growth rate. We found greater seedling emergence, survival, and population growth for plants experiencing lower intra-seasonal predictability, but more so during early compared to late life stages. Since predictability levels were maintained across four generations, we have also tested whether descendants exhibited transgenerational responses to previous predictability conditions. In P. rhoeas, descendants had increased the seedling emergence compared to ancestors under both treatments, but more so under lower precipitation predictability. However, higher predictability in the late treatment induced higher survival in descendants, showing that these conditions may benefit long-term survival. This experiment highlights the ability of some plants to rapidly exploit environmental resources and increase their survival under less predictable conditions, especially during early life stages. Therefore, this study provides relevant evidence of the survival capacity of some species under current and future short-term environmental alterations. PeerJ Inc. 2019-03-08 /pmc/articles/PMC6410692/ /pubmed/30867983 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6443 Text en © 2019 March-Salas and Fitze http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Ecology
March-Salas, Martí
Fitze, Patrick S.
A multi-year experiment shows that lower precipitation predictability encourages plants’ early life stages and enhances population viability
title A multi-year experiment shows that lower precipitation predictability encourages plants’ early life stages and enhances population viability
title_full A multi-year experiment shows that lower precipitation predictability encourages plants’ early life stages and enhances population viability
title_fullStr A multi-year experiment shows that lower precipitation predictability encourages plants’ early life stages and enhances population viability
title_full_unstemmed A multi-year experiment shows that lower precipitation predictability encourages plants’ early life stages and enhances population viability
title_short A multi-year experiment shows that lower precipitation predictability encourages plants’ early life stages and enhances population viability
title_sort multi-year experiment shows that lower precipitation predictability encourages plants’ early life stages and enhances population viability
topic Ecology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6410692/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30867983
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6443
work_keys_str_mv AT marchsalasmarti amultiyearexperimentshowsthatlowerprecipitationpredictabilityencouragesplantsearlylifestagesandenhancespopulationviability
AT fitzepatricks amultiyearexperimentshowsthatlowerprecipitationpredictabilityencouragesplantsearlylifestagesandenhancespopulationviability
AT marchsalasmarti multiyearexperimentshowsthatlowerprecipitationpredictabilityencouragesplantsearlylifestagesandenhancespopulationviability
AT fitzepatricks multiyearexperimentshowsthatlowerprecipitationpredictabilityencouragesplantsearlylifestagesandenhancespopulationviability