Species identity and neighbor size surpass the impact of tree species diversity on productivity in experimental broad-leaved tree sapling assemblages under dry and moist conditions

Water status dynamics and drought tolerance of juvenile European beech, Douglas fir and Norway spruce trees as dependent on neighborhood and nitrogen supply

To increase the resilience of forests to drought and other hazards, foresters are increasingly planting mixed stands. This requires knowledge about the drought response of tree species in pure and mixed-culture neighborhoods. In addition, drought frequently interacts with continued atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition. To disentangle these factors for European beech, Norway spruce and Douglas fir, we conducted a replicated 3-factorial sapling growth experiment with three moisture levels, (high, medium, and low), two N levels (high and ambient), and pure and mixed-culture neighborhoods. We measured biomass, stomatal conductance (GS), shoot water potential (at predawn: ΨPD, midday, and turgor loss point: ΨTLP), branch xylem embolism resistance (Ψ50) and minimum epidermal conductance (Gmin). The three species differed most with respect to Gmin (10-fold higher in beech than in the conifers), hydroscape area (larger in beech), and the time elapsed to reach stomatal closure (TΨGS90) and ΨTLP (TTLP; shorter in beech), while Ψ50 and ΨTLP were remarkably similar. Neighborhood (pure vs mixed-culture) influenced biomass production, water status and hydraulic traits, notably GS (higher in Douglas fir, but lower in spruce and beech, in mixtures than pure culture), hydraulic safety margin (smaller for beech in mixtures), and TΨGS90 and TTLP (shorter for spruce in mixture). High N generally increased GS, but no consistent N effects on leaf water status and hydraulic traits were detected, suggesting that neighbor identity had a larger effect on plant water relations than N availability. We conclude that both tree neighborhood and N availability modulate the drought response of beech, spruce, and Douglas fir. Species mixing can alleviate the drought stress of some species, but often by disadvantaging other species. Thus, our study suggests that stabilizing and building resilience of production forests against a drier and warmer climate may depend primarily on the right species choice; species mixing can support the agenda.

Identifying "Useful" Fitness Models: Balancing the Benefits of Added Complexity with Realistic Data Requirements in Models of Individual Plant Fitness

AbstractDirect species interactions are commonly included in individual fitness models used for coexistence and local diversity modeling. Though widely considered important for such models, direct interactions alone are often insufficient for accurately predicting fitness, coexistence, or diversity outcomes. Incorporating higher-order interactions (HOIs) can lead to more accurate individual fitness models but also adds many model terms, which can quickly result in model overfitting. We explore approaches for balancing the trade-off between tractability and model accuracy that occurs when HOIs are added to individual fitness models. To do this, we compare models parameterized with data from annual plant communities in Australia and Spain, varying in the extent of information included about the focal and neighbor species. The best-performing models for both data sets were those that grouped neighbors based on origin status and life form, a grouping approach that reduced the number of model parameters substantially while retaining important ecological information about direct interactions and HOIs. Results suggest that the specific identity of focal or neighbor species is not necessary for building well-performing fitness models that include HOIs. In fact, grouping neighbors by even basic functional information seems sufficient to maximize model accuracy, an important outcome for the practical use of HOI-inclusive fitness models.

Interactions between Climate and Nutrient Cycles on Forest Response to Global Change: The Role of Mixed Forests

Forest ecosystems are undergoing unprecedented changes in environmental conditions due to global change impacts. Modification of global biogeochemical cycles of carbon and nitrogen, and the subsequent climate change are affecting forest functions at different scales, from physiology and growth of individual trees to cycling of nutrients. This review summarizes the present knowledge regarding the impact of global change on forest functioning not only with respect to climate change, which is the focus of most studies, but also the influence of altered nitrogen cycle and the interactions among them. The carbon dioxide (CO2) fertilization effect on tree growth is expected to be constrained by nutrient imbalances resulting from high N deposition rates and the counteractive effect of increasing water deficit, which interact in a complex way. At the community level, responses to global change are modified by species interactions that may lead to competition for resources and/or relaxation due to facilitation and resource partitioning processes. Thus, some species mixtures can be more resistant to drought than their respective pure forests, albeit it depends on environmental conditions and species’ functional traits. Climate change and nitrogen deposition have additional impacts on litterfall dynamics, and subsequent decomposition and nutrient mineralization processes. Elemental ratios (i.e., stoichiometry) are associated with important ecosystem traits, including trees’ adaptability to stress or decomposition rates. As stoichiometry of different ecosystem components are also influenced by global change, nutrient cycling in forests will be altered too. Therefore, a re-assessment of traditional forest management is needed in order to cope with global change. Proposed silvicultural systems emphasize the key role of diversity to assure multiple ecosystem services, and special attention has been paid to mixed-species forests. Finally, a summary of the patterns and underlying mechanisms governing the relationships between diversity and different ecosystems functions, such as productivity and stability, is provided.

De novo transcriptome assembly and analysis of differential gene expression in response to drought in European beech

Despite the ecological and economic importance of European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) genomic resources of this species are still limited. This hampers an understanding of the molecular basis of adaptation to stress. Since beech will most likely be threatened by the consequences of climate change, an understanding of adaptive processes to climate change-related drought stress is of major importance. Here, we used RNA-seq to provide the first drought stress-related transcriptome of beech. In a drought stress trial with beech saplings, 50 samples were taken for RNA extraction at five points in time during a soil desiccation experiment. De novo transcriptome assembly and analysis of differential gene expression revealed 44,335 contigs, and 662 differentially expressed genes between the stress and normally watered control group. Gene expression was specific to the different time points, and only five genes were significantly differentially expressed between the stress and control group on all five sampling days. GO term enrichment showed that mostly genes involved in lipid- and homeostasis-related processes were upregulated, whereas genes involved in oxidative stress response were downregulated in the stressed seedlings. This study gives first insights into the genomic drought stress response of European beech, and provides new genetic resources for adaptation research in this species.

Sapling growth rates reveal conspecific negative density dependence in a temperate forest

Local tree species diversity is maintained in part by conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD). This pervasive mechanism occurs in a variety of forms and ecosystems, but research to date has been heavily skewed toward tree seedling survival in tropical forests. To evaluate CNDD more broadly, we investigated how sapling growth rates were affected by conspecific adult neighbors in a fully mapped 25.6 ha temperate deciduous forest. We examined growth rates as a function of the local adult tree neighborhood (via spatial autoregressive modeling) and compared the spatial positioning of faster‐growing and slower‐growing saplings with respect to adult conspecific and heterospecific trees (via bivariate point pattern analysis). In addition, to determine whether CNDD‐driven variation in growth rates leaves a corresponding spatial signal, we extended our point pattern analysis to a static, growth‐independent comparison of saplings and the next larger size class. We found that negative conspecific effects on sapling growth were most prevalent. Five of the nine species that were sufficiently abundant for analysis exhibited CNDD, while only one species showed evidence of a positive conspecific effect, and one or two species, depending on the analysis, displayed heterospecific effects. There was general agreement between the autoregressive models and the point pattern analyses based on sapling growth rates, but point pattern analyses based on single‐point‐in‐time size classes yielded results that differed markedly from the other two approaches. Our work adds to the growing body of evidence that CNDD is an important force in temperate forests, and demonstrates that this process extends to sapling growth rates. Further, our findings indicate that point pattern analyses based solely on size classes may fail to detect the process of interest (e.g., neighborhood‐driven variation in growth rates), in part due to the confounding of tree size and age.

Nitrogen Addition Enhances Drought Sensitivity of Young Deciduous Tree Species

Understanding how trees respond to global change drivers is central to predict changes in forest structure and functions. Although there is evidence on the mode of nitrogen (N) and drought (D) effects on tree growth, our understanding of the interplay of these factors is still limited. Simultaneously, as mixtures are expected to be less sensitive to global change as compared to monocultures, we aimed to investigate the combined effects of N addition and D on the productivity of three tree species (Fagus sylvatica, Quercus petraea, Pseudotsuga menziesii) in relation to functional diverse species mixtures using data from a 4-year field experiment in Northwest Germany. Here we show that species mixing can mitigate the negative effects of combined N fertilization and D events, but the community response is mainly driven by the combination of certain traits rather than the tree species richness of a community. For beech, we found that negative effects of D on growth rates were amplified by N fertilization (i.e., combined treatment effects were non-additive), while for oak and fir, the simultaneous effects of N and D were additive. Beech and oak were identified as most sensitive to combined N+D effects with a strong size-dependency observed for beech, suggesting that the negative impact of N+D becomes stronger with time as beech grows larger. As a consequence, the net biodiversity effect declined at the community level, which can be mainly assigned to a distinct loss of complementarity in beech-oak mixtures. This pattern, however, was not evident in the other species-mixtures, indicating that neighborhood composition (i.e., trait combination), but not tree species richness mediated the relationship between tree diversity and treatment effects on tree growth. Our findings point to the importance of the qualitative role ('trait portfolio') that biodiversity play in determining resistance of diverse tree communities to environmental changes. As such, they provide further understanding for adaptive management strategies in the context of global change.