Dataset Information

Divergent Responses of Community Reproductive and Vegetative Phenology to Warming and Cooling: Asymmetry Versus Symmetry.

ABSTRACT: Few studies have focused on the response of plant community phenology to temperature change using manipulative experiments. A lack of understanding of whether responses of community reproductive and vegetative phenological sequences to warming and cooling are asymmetrical or symmetrical limits our capacity to predict responses under warming and cooling. A reciprocal transplant experiment was conducted for 3 years to evaluate response patterns of the temperature sensitivities of community phenological sequences to warming (transferred downward) and cooling (transferred upward) along four elevations on the Tibetan Plateau. We found that the temperature sensitivities of flowering stages had asymmetric responses to warming and cooling, whereas symmetric responses to warming and cooling were observed for the vegetative phenological sequences. Our findings showed that coverage changes of flowering functional groups (FFGs; i.e., early-spring FFG, mid-summer FFG, and late-autumn FFG) and their compensation effects combined with required accumulated soil temperatureto codetermined the asymmetric and symmetric responses of community phenological sequences to warming and cooling. These results suggest that coverage change in FFGs on warming and cooling processes can be a primary driver of community phenological variation and may lead to inaccurate phenlogical estimation at large scale, such as based on remote sensing.

SUBMITTER: Meng F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6811613 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Divergent Responses of Community Reproductive and Vegetative Phenology to Warming and Cooling: Asymmetry Versus Symmetry.

Meng Fandong F Zhang Lirong L Niu Haishan H Suonan Ji J Zhang Zhenhua Z Wang Qi Q Li Bowen B Lv Wangwang W Wang Shiping S Duan Jichuang J Liu Peipei P Renzeng Wangmu W Jiang Lili L Luo Caiyun C Dorji Tsechoe T Wang Zhezhen Z Du Mingyuan M

Frontiers in plant science 20191017

Few studies have focused on the response of plant community phenology to temperature change using manipulative experiments. A lack of understanding of whether responses of community reproductive and vegetative phenological sequences to warming and cooling are asymmetrical or symmetrical limits our capacity to predict responses under warming and cooling. A reciprocal transplant experiment was conducted for 3 years to evaluate response patterns of the temperature sensitivities of community phenolo ...[more]

PMID: 31681391

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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

Divergent Responses of Community Reproductive and Vegetative Phenology to Warming and Cooling: Asymmetry Versus Symmetry.

Publications

Divergent Responses of Community Reproductive and Vegetative Phenology to Warming and Cooling: Asymmetry Versus Symmetry.

Similar Datasets

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