Variable responses of alpine-plant communities to warming and loss of dominant species

Abstract

Responses of ecological communities to perturbations are inherently variable because responses of their constituent populations also vary. Species within a single community may show combinations of no response, positive responses, and negative responses to any given perturbation often canceling each other out resulting in small or no signal that the community level. Here we explore the impacts of warming and loss of the dominant species on alpine ecosystems in a global study. We investigate warming and species-loss treatments on population- and community-level dynamics across alpine-plant communities at two elevations in five globally-distributed mountain locations. Communities showed varied responses to treatments; no community showed strong responses to a single treatment. Rather, most sites were influenced by both perturbations. Populations within these communities responded idiosyncratically, suggesting that constituent species are not all equally robust to perturbations even when community-level effects appear weak. Our results highlight the challenge of making general predictions about population- and community-level responses of alpine ecosystems in the face of present and future perturbations.