Published December 21, 2023 | Version v1
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Competitors alter selection on alpine plants exposed to experimental climate change

  • 1. University of Neuchâtel
  • 2. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich

Description

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.

Notes

Funding provided by: European Union
Crossref Funder Registry ID: https://ror.org/019w4f821
Award Number:

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Related works

Is source of
10.5061/dryad.v6wwpzh30 (DOI)