Altitude and latitude have different effects on population characteristics of the widespread plant Anthyllis vulneraria

Widespread plants may provide natural models for how population processes change with temperature and other environmental variables and how they may respond to global change. Similar changes in temperature can occur along altitudinal and latitudinal gradients, but hardly any study has compared the effects of the two types of gradients. We studied populations of Anthyllis vulneraria along a latitudinal gradient from Central Europe to the range limit in the North and an altitudinal gradient in the Alps from 500 m to the altitudinal limit at 2500 m, both encompassing a change in annual mean temperature of c. 11.5 °C. Plant size and reproduction decreased, but plant density increased along both gradients, indicating higher recruitment and demographic compensation among vital rates. Our results support the view that demographic compensation may be common in widespread species in contrast to the predictions of the abundant centre model of biogeography. Variation in temperature along the gradients had the strongest effects on most population characteristics, followed by that in precipitation, solar radiation, and soil nutrients. The proportion of plants flowering, seed set and seed mass declined with latitude, while the large variation in these traits along the altitudinal gradient was not related to elevation and covarying environmental variables like annual mean temperature. This suggests that it will be more difficult to draw conclusions about the potential impacts of future climate warming on plant populations in mountains, because of the importance of small-scale variation in environmental conditions. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00442-021-05030-6.