Dataset Information

Responses of community-level plant-insect interactions to climate warming in a meadow steppe.

ABSTRACT: Climate warming may disrupt trophic interactions, consequently influencing ecosystem functioning. Most studies have concentrated on the temperature-effects on plant-insect interactions at individual and population levels, with a particular emphasis on changes in phenology and distribution. Nevertheless, the available evidence from the community level is limited. A 3-year field manipulative experiment was performed to test potential responses of plant and insect communities, and plant-insect interactions, to elevated temperature in a meadow steppe. Warming increased the biomass of plant community and forbs, and decreased grass biomass, indicating a shift from grass-dominant to grass-forb mixed plant community. Reduced abundance of the insect community under warming, particularly the herbivorous insects, was attributed to lower abundance of Euchorthippus unicolor and a Cicadellidae species resulting from lower food availability and higher defensive herbivory. Lower herbivore abundance caused lower predator species richness because of reduced prey resources and contributed to an overall decrease in insect species richness. Interestingly, warming enhanced the positive relationship between insect and plant species richness, implying that the strength of the plant-insect interactions was altered by warming. Our results suggest that alterations to plant-insect interactions at a community level under climate warming in grasslands may be more important and complex than previously thought.

SUBMITTER: Zhu H

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4685464 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Responses of community-level plant-insect interactions to climate warming in a meadow steppe.

Zhu Hui H Zou Xuehui X Wang Deli D Wan Shiqiang S Wang Ling L Guo Jixun J

Scientific reports 20151221

Climate warming may disrupt trophic interactions, consequently influencing ecosystem functioning. Most studies have concentrated on the temperature-effects on plant-insect interactions at individual and population levels, with a particular emphasis on changes in phenology and distribution. Nevertheless, the available evidence from the community level is limited. A 3-year field manipulative experiment was performed to test potential responses of plant and insect communities, and plant-insect inte ...[more]

PMID: 26686758

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Project description:Climate warming is often seasonally asymmetric with a higher temperature increase toward winters than summers. However, the effect of winter-biased warming on plant reproductive phenology has been seldom investigated under natural field conditions. The goal of this study was to determine the effects of winter-biased warming on plant reproductive phenologies. In an alpine meadow of Tibetan Plateau, we deployed six large (15 m × 15 m × 2.5 m height) open top chambers (three warmed chambers and three non-warmed chambers) to achieve winter-biased warming (i.e., a small increase in annual mean temperature with a greater increase towards winter than summer). We investigated three phenophases (onset and offset times and duration) for both the flowering and fruiting phenologies of 11 common species in 2017 and 8 species in 2018. According to the vernalization theory, we hypothesized that mild winter-biased warming would delay flowering and fruiting phenologies. The data indicated that the phenological responses to warming were species-specific (including positive, neutral, and negative responses), and the number of plant species advancing flowering (by averagely 4.5 days) and fruiting onset times (by averagely 3.6 days) was higher than those delaying the times. These changes were inconsistent with the vernalization hypothesis (i.e. plants need to achieve a threshold of chilling before flowering) alone, but can be partly explained by the accumulated temperature hypothesis (i.e. plants need to achieve a threshold of accumulative temperature before flowering) and/or the overtopping hypothesis (i.e. plants need to reach community canopy layer before flowering). The interspecific difference in the response of reproductive phenology could be attributed to the variation in plant traits including plant height growth, the biomass ratio of root to shoot, and seed mass. These results indicate that a mild winter-biased warming may trigger significant change in plant reproductive phenology in an alpine meadow.

Dataset Information

Responses of community-level plant-insect interactions to climate warming in a meadow steppe.

Publications

Responses of community-level plant-insect interactions to climate warming in a meadow steppe.

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