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opencc-zeroDec 2012View details →

Data from: Genetic diversity in widespread species is not congruent with species richness in alpine plant communities

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) aims at the conservation of all three levels of biodiversity, i.e. ecosystems, species and genes. Genetic diversity represents evolutionary potential and is important for ecosystem functioning. Unfortunately, genetic diversity in natural populations is hardly considered in conservation strategies because it is difficult to measure and has been hypothesized to co-vary with species richness. This means that species richness is taken as a surrogate of genetic diversity in conservation planning, though their relationship has not been properly evaluated. We tested whether the genetic and species levels of biodiversity co-vary, using a large-scale and multi-species approach. We chose the high-mountain flora of the Alps and the Carpathians as study systems and demonstrate that species richness and genetic diversity are not correlated. Species richness thus cannot act as a surrogate for genetic diversity. Our results have important consequences for implementing the CBD when designing conservation strategies.

opencc-zeroMay 2020View details →

Plant dispersal strategies of high tropical alpine communities across the Andes

• Dispersal is a key ecological process that influences plant community assembly. Therefore, understanding whether dispersal strategies are associated with climate is of utmost importance, particularly in areas greatly exposed to climate change. We examined alpine plant communities located in the mountain summits of the tropical Andes across a 4000 km latitudinal gradient. We investigated species dispersal strategies and tested their association with climatic conditions and their evolutionary history. • We used dispersal-related traits (dispersal mode and growth form) to characterize dispersal strategies for 486 species recorded on 49 mountain summits. Then we analysed the phylogenetic signal of traits and investigated the association between dispersal traits, phylogeny, climate and space using structural equation modelling and fourth-corner analysis together with RLQ ordination. • A median of 36% species in the communities were anemochorous (wind-dispersed) and herbaceous. This dispersal strategy was followed by the barochory-herb combination (herbaceous with unspecialised seeds, dispersed by gravity) with a median of 26.3% species in the communities. The latter strategy was common among species with distributions restricted to alpine environments. • While trait states were phylogenetically conserved, they were significantly associated with a temperature gradient. Low minimum air temperatures, found at higher latitudes/elevations, were correlated with the prevalence of barochory and the herb growth form, traits that are common among Caryophyllales, Brassicaceae and Poaceae. Milder temperatures, found at lower latitudes/elevations, were associated with endozoochorous, shrub species mostly from the Ericaceae family. Anemochorous species were found all along the temperature gradient, possibly due to the success of anemochorous Compositae species in alpine regions. We also found that trait state dominance was more associated with the climatic conditions of the summit than with community phylogenetic structure. Although the evolutionary history of the tropical Andean flora has also shaped dispersal strategies, our results suggest that the environment had a more predominant role. • Synthesis: We showed that dispersal related traits are strongly associated with a gradient of minimum air temperatures in the Andes. Global warming may weaken this key filter at tropical alpine summits, potentially altering community dispersal strategies in this region and thus, plant community structure and composition.

opencc-zeroDec 2023View details →

Competitors alter selection on alpine plants exposed to experimental climate change

Investigating how climate change alters selection regimes is a crucial step towards understanding the potential of populations to evolve in the face of changing conditions. Previous studies have mainly focused on understanding how changing climate directly influences selection, while the role of species' interactions has received little attention. Here, we used a transplant experiment along an elevation gradient to estimate how climate warming and competitive interactions lead to shifts in directional phenotypic selection on morphology and phenology of four alpine plants. We found that warming generally imposed novel selection, with the largest shifts in regimes acting on specific leaf area and flowering time across species. Competitors instead weakened the selection acting on traits that was imposed directly by warming. Weakened or absent selection in the presence of competitors was largely associated with the suppression of absolute means and variation of fitness. Our results suggest that although climate change can impose strong selection, competitive interactions within communities might act to limit selection and thereby stymie evolutionary responses in alpine plants facing climate change.

opencc-zeroJan 2024View details →

Drivers of plant diversity, community composition, functional traits and soil processes along an alpine gradient in the central Chilean Andes

The datasets in this repository include plant community surveys, hyperspectral reflectance data at the leaf and canopy level, leaf trait data, and soil chemistry data collected at five sites along an elevation gradient of 2400m-3500m in the Chilean Andes (33°S, 70°W). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the environmental drivers of community assembly processes along the elevation gradient.

opencc-zeroMar 2024View details →

Data from: Metabarcoding analysis provides insight into the link between prey and plant intake in a large alpine cat carnivore, the snow leopard

Species of the family Felidae (a group represented by cats) are thought to be obligate carnivores, specialized for hunting and consuming other animals. However, the detection of plants in the feces of felids raises questions about the role of plants in their diet. This is particularly true for the snow leopard (Panthera uncia), a big cat native to central and South Asia's high mountains. Our study aimed to comprehensively identify the prey and plants consumed by snow leopards as well as six other sympatric mammals. We applied DNA metabarcoding methods on 126 fecal samples collected from the Sarychat-Ertash Nature Reserve in Kyrgyzstan. We found that among the three most common plant families in snow leopard feces, Tamaricaceae (genus Myricaraia) was consumed often by snow leopards. The genus Myricaria frequently appeared in samples lacking any animal prey DNA, indicating that snow leopards might have consumed this plant especially when their digestive tracts were empty. We also observed a significant difference in plant composition between male and female snow leopards, and potentially between sampling seasons. We provide a comprehensive overview of the prey and plants detected in the feces of snow leopards and sympatric mammals. We believe our findings will help in formulating hypotheses and guiding future research to understand the adaptive significance of plant-eating behavior in felids and animal-plant relationships in the ecosystem.

opencc-zeroAug 2022View details →

Alpine butterflies want to fly high: Species and communities shift upwards faster than their host plants

Despite sometimes strong co-dependencies of insect herbivores and plants, responses of individual taxa to accelerating climate change are typically studied in isolation. Thereby, biotic interactions that potentially limit species in tracking their preferred climatic niches are ignored. Here, we chose butterflies as a prominent representative of herbivorous insects to investigate the impacts of temperature changes and their larval host plant distributions along a 1.4 km elevational gradient in the German Alps. Following a sampling protocol of 2009, we re-visited 33 grassland plots in 2019 over an entire growing season. We quantified changes in butterfly abundance and richness by repeated transect walks on each plot and disentangled the direct and indirect effects of locally assessed temperature, site management, and larval and adult food resource availability on these patterns. Additionally, we determined elevational range shifts of butterflies and host plants at both the community and species level. Comparing the two sampled years (2009, 2019), we found a severe decline in butterfly abundance and a clear upward shift of butterflies along the elevational gradient. We detected shifts in the peak of species richness, community composition and at the species level, whereby mountainous species shifted particularly strongly. In contrast, host plants showed barely any change, neither concerning species richness, nor individual species shifts. Further, temperature and host plant richness were the main drivers of butterfly richness, with change in temperature explaining best the change of richness over time. We conclude that host plants are not yet hindering butterfly species and communities from shifting upwards. However, the mismatch between butterfly and host plant shifts might become a problem for this very close plant-herbivore relationship, especially towards higher elevations, if butterflies fail to adapt to new host plants. Further, our results support the value of conserving traditional extensive pasture use as a promoter of host plants and thereby butterfly richness.

Fig. 2 in Anticoccidial activity of the secondary metabolites in alpine plants frequently ingested by wild Japanese rock ptarmigans

Fig. 2. The efficacy of the natural components against E. tenella sporozoites. The viability of sporozoites was determined at various concentrations of the compounds that showed effectiveness at 100 μM. The half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) value was determined from the approximate curves obtained from these results. SPZ: sporozoite.

Fig. 1 in Anticoccidial activity of the secondary metabolites in alpine plants frequently ingested by wild Japanese rock ptarmigans

Fig. 1. Direct effects of the natural components derived from alpine plants on E. tenella sporozoites. The viability of sporozoites treated with each natural component derived from alpine plants or lasalocid (positive control) with the viability of the DMSO-treated group set as 100%. The final concentration was 100 μM for the natural components, and 1 μM for lasalocid. SPZ: sporozoite; Las: lasalocid. Outliers were tested using Thompson's test (p <0.05), and the student's t-test was utilized to compare the data with the DMSO-treated group as a control (**p <0.01, ***p <0.001, ****p <0.0001).

Fig. 3 in Anticoccidial activity of the secondary metabolites in alpine plants frequently ingested by wild Japanese rock ptarmigans

Fig. 3. Confirmation of the active compounds using commercially available compounds and their efficacy. (A) The viability of sporozoites treated with each commercially available compound or lasalocid (positive control) was compared to the viability of the DMSO-treated group, which was set as 100%. The final concentration was 100 μM for the synthetic compounds, and 1 μM for lasalocid. SPZ: sporozoite, Las: lasalocid. The student's t-test was used for the comparisons (****p <0.0001) without outliers, as tested using Thompson's test (p <0.05). (B) The viability of sporozoites was determined at each concentration of the synthetic compounds that showed effectiveness at 100 μM. The half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) value was determined by approximating the curves obtained from the results.

Fig. 4 in Anticoccidial activity of the secondary metabolites in alpine plants frequently ingested by wild Japanese rock ptarmigans

Fig. 4. The inhibitory effects of the natural components derived from alpine plants on sporozoite cell invasion. The invasion rate of sporozoites treated with each natural component derived from alpine plants or lasalocid (positive control) with the viability of the DMSO-treated group set as 100%. Each compound was used at its maximum non-toxic concentration. Las: lasalocid. The student's t-test was utilized to compare the data with the DMSO-treated group as a control (**p <0.01, ***p <0.001, ****p <0.0001). Outliers were identified and removed using Thompson's test (p <0.05).

opencc-zeroDec 2022View details →

Contrasting effects of two phenotypes of an alpine cushion plant on understory species drive community assembly

In alpine systems, cushion plants act as foundation species by ameliorating local environmental conditions. Empirical studies indicate that contrasting phenotypes of alpine cushion species have different effects on understory plant species, either facilitative or competitive. Furthermore, dependent species within each community type might also exhibit different responses to each cushion phenotype, which can be clustered into several "response groups". Additionally, these species-groups specific responses to alpine cushion species phenotypes could alter community assembly. However, very few studies have assessed responses of dependent communities at species-group levels, in particular for both above- and below-ground communities. Here, we selected a loose and a tight phenotype of the alpine cushion species Thylacospermum caespitosum in two sites in northwest China, and use the relative intensity of interactions index to quantify cushion plant effects on subordinate communities of plants and soil fungi and bacteria. We assessed variations in responses of both above- and below-ground organisms to cushion plant effects at species-group level. Species-group level analyses showed that the effects of the phenotype varied among groups of each of the three community types, and different species-groups were composed of unique taxa. Additionally, we found that loose cushions enhanced stochastic processes in community assembly, for plants and soil fungi but not for soil bacteria. These variations of phenotypic effects on different species-group induced contrasting taxonomic composition between groups and altered community assembly thereby. Our study highlights the occurrence of contrasting effects of two phenotypes of a foundation cushion plant on understory plants, soil fungi and bacteria community composition, but not necessarily on their richness. We also showed that assessing responses of understory species at the species-group level allows a more realistic and mechanistic understanding of biotic interactions both for above- and below-ground communities.