Disjunct populations of European vascular plant species keep the same climatic niches

• Published in: Global Ecology and Biogeography
• Main Authors: Wasof, Safaa, Lenoir, Jonathan, Aarrestad, Per Arild, Alsos, Inger Greve, Armbruster, W. Scott, Austrheim, Gunnar, Bakkestuen, Vegar, Birks, H. John B., Bråthen, Kari Anne, Broennimann, Olivier, Brunet, Jörg, Bruun, Hans Henrik, Dahlberg, Carl Johan, Diekmann, Martin, Dullinger, Stefan, Dynesius, Mats, Ejrnæs, Rasmus, Gégout, Jean‐Claude, Graae, Bente Jessen, Grytnes, John‐Arvid, Guisan, Antoine, Hylander, Kristoffer, Jónsdóttir, Ingibjörg S., Kapfer, Jutta, Klanderud, Kari, Luoto, Miska, Milbau, Ann, Moora, Mari, Nygaard, Bettina, Odland, Arvid, Pauli, Harald, Ravolainen, Virve, Reinhardt, Stefanie, Sandvik, Sylvi Marlen, Schei, Fride Høistad, Speed, James D. M., Svenning, Jens‐Christian, Thuiller, Wilfried, Tveraabak, Liv Unn, Vandvik, Vigdis, Velle, Liv Guri, Virtanen, Risto, Vittoz, Pascal, Willner, Wolfgang, Wohlgemuth, Thomas, Zimmermann, Niklaus E., Zobel, Martin, Decocq, Guillaume
• Other Authors: European Research Council, Swedish Research Council Formas, Swedish Research Council VR, Centre of Excellence FIBIR and IUT 20-28, Norwegian Research Council, EkoKlim Program at Stockholm University
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2015
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/geb.12375; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fgeb.12375; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/geb.12375

Abstract Aim Previous research on how climatic niches vary across species ranges has focused on a limited number of species, mostly invasive, and has not, to date, been very conclusive. Here we assess the degree of niche conservatism between distant populations of native alpine plant species that have been separated for thousands of years. Location European A lps and F ennoscandia. Methods Of the studied pool of 888 terrestrial vascular plant species occurring in both the A lps and F ennoscandia, we used two complementary approaches to test and quantify climatic‐niche shifts for 31 species having strictly disjunct populations and 358 species having either a contiguous or a patchy distribution with distant populations. First, we used species distribution modelling to test for a region effect on each species' climatic niche. Second, we quantified niche overlap and shifts in niche width (i.e. ecological amplitude) and position (i.e. ecological optimum) within a bi‐dimensional climatic space. Results Only one species (3%) of the 31 species with strictly disjunct populations and 58 species (16%) of the 358 species with distant populations showed a region effect on their climatic niche. Niche overlap was higher for species with strictly disjunct populations than for species with distant populations and highest for arctic–alpine species. Climatic niches were, on average, wider and located towards warmer and wetter conditions in the Alps. Main conclusion Climatic niches seem to be generally conserved between populations that are separated between the A lps and F ennoscandia and have probably been so for 10,000–15,000 years. Therefore, the basic assumption of species distribution models that a species' climatic niche is constant in space and time – at least on time scales 10 4 years or less – seems to be largely valid for arctic–alpine plants.