@article{DeLombaerdeVerheyenPerringetal.2018, author = {De Lombaerde, Emiel and Verheyen, Kris and Perring, Michael P. and Bernhardt-Roemermann, Markus and Van Calster, Hans and Brunet, Jorg and Chudomelova, Marketa and Decocq, Guillaume and Diekmann, Martin and Durak, Tomasz and Hedl, Radim and Heinken, Thilo and Hommel, Patrick and Jaroszewicz, Bogdan and Kopecky, Martin and Lenoir, Jonathan and Macek, Martin and M{\´a}liš, František and Mitchell, Fraser J. G. and Naaf, Tobias and Newman, Miles and Petř{\´i}k, Petr and Reczyńska, Kamila and Schmidt, Wolfgang and Swierkosz, Krzysztof and Vild, Ondrej and Wulf, Monika and Baetena, Lander}, title = {Responses of competitive understorey species to spatial environmental gradients inaccurately explain temporal changes}, series = {Basic and applied ecology : Journal of the Gesellschaft f{\"u}r {\"O}kologie}, volume = {30}, journal = {Basic and applied ecology : Journal of the Gesellschaft f{\"u}r {\"O}kologie}, publisher = {Elsevier GMBH}, address = {M{\"u}nchen}, issn = {1439-1791}, doi = {10.1016/j.baae.2018.05.013}, pages = {52 -- 64}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Understorey plant communities play a key role in the functioning of forest ecosystems. Under favourable environmental conditions, competitive understorey species may develop high abundances and influence important ecosystem processes such as tree regeneration. Thus, understanding and predicting the response of competitive understorey species as a function of changing environmental conditions is important for forest managers. In the absence of sufficient temporal data to quantify actual vegetation changes, space-for-time (SFT) substitution is often used, i.e. studies that use environmental gradients across space to infer vegetation responses to environmental change over time. Here we assess the validity of such SFT approaches and analysed 36 resurvey studies from ancient forests with low levels of recent disturbances across temperate Europe to assess how six competitive understorey plant species respond to gradients of overstorey cover, soil conditions, atmospheric N deposition and climatic conditions over space and time. The combination of historical and contemporary surveys allows (i) to test if observed contemporary patterns across space are consistent at the time of the historical survey, and, crucially, (ii) to assess whether changes in abundance over time given recorded environmental change match expectations from patterns recorded along environmental gradients in space. We found consistent spatial relationships at the two periods: local variation in soil variables and overstorey cover were the best predictors of individual species' cover while interregional variation in coarse-scale variables, i.e. N deposition and climate, was less important. However, we found that our SFT approach could not accurately explain the large variation in abundance changes over time. We thus recommend to be cautious when using SFT substitution to infer species responses to temporal changes.}, language = {en} } @article{MoradiFakheranPeintingeretal.2012, author = {Moradi, H. and Fakheran, S. and Peintinger, M. and Bergamini, A. and Schmid, B. and Joshi, Jasmin Radha}, title = {Profiteers of environmental change in the Swiss Alps increase of thermophilous and generalist plants in wetland ecosystems within the last 10 years}, series = {Alpine botany}, volume = {122}, journal = {Alpine botany}, number = {1}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Basel}, issn = {1664-2201}, doi = {10.1007/s00035-012-0102-3}, pages = {45 -- 56}, year = {2012}, abstract = {It has been predicted that Europe will experience a rise in temperature of 2.2-5.3 A degrees C within this century. This increase in temperature may lead to vegetation change along altitudinal gradients. To test whether vegetation composition has already changed in the recent decade due to current warming (and other concomitant environmental changes), we recorded plant species composition in 1995 and 2005/2006 in Swiss pre-alpine fen meadows (800-1,400 m a.s.l.). Despite no obvious changes in the management of these fens, overall, plant species richness (cumulative number of plant species at five plots per site) significantly increased over this period. This was mainly due to an increase in the number of thermophilous, rich-soil-indicator and shade-indicator species, which corresponded to increased community productivity and shading within the vegetation layer. In contrast, fen specialists significantly declined in species numbers. The strongest species shifts occurred at the lowest sites, which overall had a higher colonization rate by new species than did sites at higher altitudes. Vegetation change along the altitudinal gradient was also affected by different types of land management: early-flowering species and species with low habitat specificity had high colonization rates in grazed fens, especially at low altitudes.}, language = {en} } @article{SchwarzerJoshi2017, author = {Schwarzer, Christian and Joshi, Jasmin Radha}, title = {Parallel adaptive responses to abiotic but not biotic conditions after cryptic speciation in European peat moss Sphagnum magellanicum Brid}, series = {Perspectives in plant ecology, evolution and systematics}, volume = {26}, journal = {Perspectives in plant ecology, evolution and systematics}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Jena}, issn = {1433-8319}, doi = {10.1016/j.ppees.2017.03.001}, pages = {14 -- 27}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Sphagnum magellanicum Brid. is a worldwide distributed peat moss and an ecosystem-engineer in temperate and boreal bog ecosystems suggesting a great adaptive potential to different environmental conditions. Phenotypes of S. magellanicum have been described as one species so far, although this has been questioned by the detection of several genetic groups in a recent global study. Concordant with morphological uniformity, our analyses of Mid-to Northern European plants revealed only minimal variation in nuclear nrITS and plastid rps4 sequences. However, we detected two distinct genetic groups within Europe by analyzing microsatellite data of 298 individuals from 27 populations. Plants formed an Eastern and a Western European cluster, with overlapping areas in northern Germany and southern Sweden where plants of both clusters coexist within populations but show no signs of admixture. These two cryptic taxa seem therefore to be reproductively isolated. Bayesian analyses indicated that reproductive isolation occurred before the end of the late Pleistocene glaciations. After the meltdown of the glaciers, both clusters colonized northern and central Europe from glacial refugia in the West and possibly from Euro-Siberian populations. To test for divergent adaptation to environmental conditions, we exposed plants of both clusters to experimental climate warming treatments at two different plant-diversity levels (monocultures vs. mixtures) for two years. Despite their different evolutionary history, plants of both genetic clusters responded equally to climate treatments in our southern common garden near Potsdam, Germany. However, only eastern cluster populations benefited from plant-community diversity and increased their biomass in mixtures. These differences in their ecological niche match the diverging microhabitat preferences observed in situ and may effectively hamper genetic exchange if distances between microhabitats are too large for Sphagnum sperm movement. (C) 2017 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{KurzeHeinkenFartmann2018, author = {Kurze, Susanne and Heinken, Thilo and Fartmann, Thomas}, title = {Nitrogen enrichment in host plants increases the mortality of common Lepidoptera species}, series = {Oecologia}, volume = {188}, journal = {Oecologia}, number = {4}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {New York}, issn = {0029-8549}, doi = {10.1007/s00442-018-4266-4}, pages = {1227 -- 1237}, year = {2018}, abstract = {The recent decline of Lepidoptera species strongly correlates with the increasing intensification of agriculture in Western and Central Europe. However, the effects of changed host-plant quality through agricultural fertilization on this insect group remain largely unexplored. For this reason, we tested the response of six common butterfly and moth species to host-plant fertilization using fertilizer quantities usually applied in agriculture. The larvae of the study species Coenonympha pamphilus, Lycaena phlaeas, Lycaena tityrus, Pararge aegeria, Rivula sericealis and Timandra comae were distributed according to a split-brood design to three host-plant treatments comprising one control treatment without fertilization and two fertilization treatments with an input of 150 and 300kgNha(-1)year(-1), respectively. In L.tityrus, we used two additional fertilization treatments with an input of 30 and 90kgNha(-1)year(-1), respectively. Fertilization increased the nitrogen concentration of both host-plant species, Rumex acetosella and Poa pratensis, and decreased the survival of larvae in all six Lepidoptera species by at least one-third, without clear differences between sorrel- and grass-feeding species. The declining survival rate in all species contradicts the well-accepted nitrogen-limitation hypothesis, which predicts a positive response in species performance to dietary nitrogen content. In contrast, this study presents the first evidence that current fertilization quantities in agriculture exceed the physiological tolerance of common Lepidoptera species. Our results suggest that (1) the negative effect of plant fertilization on Lepidoptera has previously been underestimated and (2) that it contributes to the range-wide decline of Lepidoptera.}, language = {en} } @article{KarpTallisSachseetal.2015, author = {Karp, Daniel S. and Tallis, Heather and Sachse, Rene and Halpern, Ben and Thonicke, Kirsten and Cramer, Wolfgang and Mooney, Harold and Polasky, Stephen and Tietjen, Britta and Waha, Katharina and Walt, Ariane and Wolny, Stacie}, title = {National indicators for observing ecosystem service change}, series = {Global environmental change : human and policy dimensions}, volume = {35}, journal = {Global environmental change : human and policy dimensions}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0959-3780}, doi = {10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.07.014}, pages = {12 -- 21}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Earth's life-support systems are in rapid decline, yet we have few metrics or indicators with which to track these changes. The world's governments are calling for biodiversity and ecosystem-service monitoring to guide and evaluate international conservation policy as well as to incorporate natural capital into their national accounts. The Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) has been tasked with setting up this monitoring system. Here we explore the immediate feasibility of creating a global ecosystem-service monitoring platform under the GEO BON framework through combining data from national statistics, global vegetation models, and production function models. We found that nine ecosystem services could be annually reported at a national scale in the short term: carbon sequestration, water supply for hydropower, and non-fisheries marine products, crop, livestock, game meat, fisheries, mariculture, and timber production. Reported changes in service delivery over time reflected ecological shocks (e.g., droughts and disease outbreaks), highlighting the immediate utility of this monitoring system. Our work also identified three opportunities for creating a more comprehensive monitoring system. First, investing in input data for ecological process models (e.g., global land-use maps) would allow many more regulating services to be monitored. Currently, only 1 of 9 services that can be reported is a regulating service. Second, household surveys and censuses could help evaluate how nature affects people and provides non-monetary benefits. Finally, to forecast the sustainability of service delivery, research efforts could focus on calculating the total remaining biophysical stocks of provisioning services. Regardless, we demonstrated that a preliminary ecosystem-service monitoring platform is immediately feasible. With sufficient international investment, the platform could evolve further into a much-needed system to track changes in our planet's life-support systems. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{JeltschBlaumBroseetal.2013, author = {Jeltsch, Florian and Blaum, Niels and Brose, Ulrich and Chipperfield, Joseph D. and Clough, Yann and Farwig, Nina and Geissler, Katja and Graham, Catherine H. and Grimm, Volker and Hickler, Thomas and Huth, Andreas and May, Felix and Meyer, Katrin M. and Pagel, J{\"o}rn and Reineking, Bj{\"o}rn and Rillig, Matthias C. and Shea, Katriona and Schurr, Frank Martin and Schroeder, Boris and Tielb{\"o}rger, Katja and Weiss, Lina and Wiegand, Kerstin and Wiegand, Thorsten and Wirth, Christian and Zurell, Damaris}, title = {How can we bring together empiricists and modellers in functional biodiversity research?}, series = {Basic and applied ecology : Journal of the Gesellschaft f{\"u}r {\"O}kologie}, volume = {14}, journal = {Basic and applied ecology : Journal of the Gesellschaft f{\"u}r {\"O}kologie}, number = {2}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Jena}, issn = {1439-1791}, doi = {10.1016/j.baae.2013.01.001}, pages = {93 -- 101}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Improving our understanding of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and our capacity to inform ecosystem management requires an integrated framework for functional biodiversity research (FBR). However, adequate integration among empirical approaches (monitoring and experimental) and modelling has rarely been achieved in FBR. We offer an appraisal of the issues involved and chart a course towards enhanced integration. A major element of this path is the joint orientation towards the continuous refinement of a theoretical framework for FBR that links theory testing and generalization with applied research oriented towards the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. We further emphasize existing decision-making frameworks as suitable instruments to practically merge these different aims of FBR and bring them into application. This integrated framework requires joint research planning, and should improve communication and stimulate collaboration between modellers and empiricists, thereby overcoming existing reservations and prejudices. The implementation of this integrative research agenda for FBR requires an adaptation in most national and international funding schemes in order to accommodate such joint teams and their more complex structures and data needs.}, language = {en} }