Plant trait and vegetation data along a 1314 m elevation gradient with fire history in Puna grasslands, Perú

Alpine grassland vegetation supports globally important biodiversity and ecosystems that are increasingly threatened by climate warming and other environmental changes. Trait-based approaches can support understanding of vegetation responses to global change drivers and consequences for ecosystem functioning. In six sites along a 1314 m elevational gradient in Puna grasslands in the Peruvian Andes, we collected datasets on vascular plant composition, plant functional traits, biomass, ecosystem fluxes, and climate data over three years. The data were collected in the wet and dry season and from plots with different fire histories. We selected traits associated with plant resource use, growth, and life history strategies (leaf area, leaf dry/wet mass, leaf thickness, specific leaf area, leaf dry matter content, leaf C, N, P content, C and N isotopes). The trait dataset contains 3,665 plant records from 145 taxa, 54,036 trait measurements (increasing the trait data coverage of the regional flora by 420%) covering 14 traits and 121 plant taxa (ca. 40% of which have no previous publicly available trait data) across 33 families.

Plant traits and associated data from a warming experiment, a seabird colony, and along elevation in Svalbard

The Arctic is warming at a rate four times the global average, while also being exposed to other global environmental changes, resulting in widespread vegetation and ecosystem change. Integrating functional trait-based approaches with multi-level vegetation, ecosystem, and landscape data enables a holistic understanding of the drivers and consequences of these changes. In two High Arctic study systems near Longyearbyen, Svalbard, a 20-year ITEX warming experiment and elevational gradients with and without nutrient input from nesting seabirds, we collected data on vegetation composition and structure, plant functional traits, ecosystem fluxes, multispectral remote sensing, and microclimate. The dataset contains 1,962 plant records and 16,160 trait measurements from 34 vascular plant taxa, for 9 of which these are the first published trait data. By integrating these comprehensive data, we bridge knowledge gaps and expand trait data coverage, including on intraspecific trait variation. These data can offer insights into ecosystem functioning and provide baselines to assess climate and environmental change impacts. Such knowledge is crucial for effective conservation and management in these vulnerable regions.

Close to open-Factors that hinder and promote open science in ecology research and education

The Open Science (OS) movement is rapidly gaining traction among policy-makers, research funders, scientific journals and individual scientists. Despite these tendencies, the pace of implementing OS throughout the scientific process and across the scientific community remains slow. Thus, a better understanding of the conditions that affect OS engagement, and in particular, of how practitioners learn, use, conduct and share research openly can guide those seeking to implement OS more broadly. We surveyed participants at an OS workshop hosted by the Living Norway Ecological Data Network in 2020 to learn how they perceived OS and its importance in their research, supervision and teaching. Further, we wanted to know what OS practices they had encountered in their education and what they saw as hindering or helping their engagement with OS. The survey contained scaled-response and open-ended questions, allowing for a mixed-methods approach. We obtained survey responses from 60 out of 128 workshop participants (47%). Responses indicated that usage and sharing of open data and code, as well as open access publication, were the most frequent OS practices. Only a minority of respondents reported having encountered OS in their formal education. A majority also viewed OS as less important in their teaching than in their research and supervisory roles. The respondents' suggestions for what would facilitate greater OS engagement in the future included knowledge, guidelines, and resources, but also social and structural support. These are aspects that could be strengthened by promoting explicit implementation of OS practices in higher education and by nurturing a more inclusive and equitable OS culture. We argue that incorporating OS in teaching and learning of science can yield substantial benefits to the research community, student learning, and ultimately, to the wider societal objectives of science and higher education.

The role of plant functional groups mediating climate impacts on carbon and biodiversity of alpine grasslands

Plant removal experiments allow assessment of the role of biotic interactions among species or functional groups in community assembly and ecosystem functioning. When replicated along climate gradients, they can assess changes in interactions among species or functional groups with climate. Across twelve sites in the Vestland Climate Grid (VCG) spanning 4 °C in growing season temperature and 2000 mm in mean annual precipitation across boreal and alpine regions of Western Norway, we conducted a fully factorial plant functional group removal experiment (graminoids, forbs, bryophytes). Over six years, we recorded biomass removed, soil microclimate, plant community composition and structure, seedling recruitment, ecosystem carbon fluxes, and reflectance in 384 experimental and control plots. The dataset consists of 5,412 biomass records, 360 species-level biomass records, 1,084,970 soil temperature records, 4,771 soil moisture records, 17,181 plant records covering 206 taxa, 16,656 seedling records, 3,696 ecosystem carbon flux measurements, and 1,244 reflectance measurements. The data can be combined with longer-term climate data and plant population, community, ecosystem, and functional trait data collected within the VCG.

Measurement(s)	vegetation layer • ecosystem-wide respiration • ecosystem-wide photosynthesis • seedling development stage • temperature of soil • plant functional group biomass • volumetric soil moisture • reflectance spectrum
Technology Type(s)	Visual species identification and cover estimation • Licor gas analyzer • Visual species identification and estimation • ibutton temperature logger • Analytical Balance • SM300 soil mositure probe, Delta-T • GreenSeeker/Normalized Difference Vegetation Index measurements
Factor Type(s)	temperature • precipitation • Plant functional type composition
Sample Characteristic - Organism	Embryophyta
Sample Characteristic - Environment	alpine tundra biome
Sample Characteristic - Location	Vestlandet Region

Global maps of soil temperature

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we provide global maps of soil temperature and bioclimatic variables at a 1-km2 resolution for 0-5 and 5-15 cm soil depth. These maps were created by calculating the difference (i.e. offset) between in situ soil temperature measurements, based on time series from over 1200 1-km2 pixels (summarized from 8519 unique temperature sensors) across all the world's major terrestrial biomes, and coarse-grained air temperature estimates from ERA5-Land (an atmospheric reanalysis by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). We show that mean annual soil temperature differs markedly from the corresponding gridded air temperature, by up to 10°C (mean = 3.0 ± 2.1°C), with substantial variation across biomes and seasons. Over the year, soils in cold and/or dry biomes are substantially warmer (+3.6 ± 2.3°C) than gridded air temperature, whereas soils in warm and humid environments are on average slightly cooler (-0.7 ± 2.3°C). The observed substantial and biome-specific offsets emphasize that the projected impacts of climate and climate change on near-surface biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are inaccurately assessed when air rather than soil temperature is used, especially in cold environments. The global soil-related bioclimatic variables provided here are an important step forward for any application in ecology and related disciplines. Nevertheless, we highlight the need to fill remaining geographic gaps by collecting more in situ measurements of microclimate conditions to further enhance the spatiotemporal resolution of global soil temperature products for ecological applications.

From a crisis to an opportunity: Eight insights for doing science in the COVID-19 era and beyond

The COVID-19 crisis has forced researchers in Ecology to change the way we work almost overnight. Nonetheless, the pandemic has provided us with several novel components for a new way of conducting science. In this perspective piece, we summarize eight central insights that are helping us, as early career researchers, navigate the uncertainties, fears, and challenges of advancing science during the COVID-19 pandemic. We highlight how innovative, collaborative, and often Open Science-driven developments that have arisen from this crisis can form a blueprint for a community reinvention in academia. Our insights include personal approaches to managing our new reality, maintaining capacity to focus and resilience in our projects, and a variety of tools that facilitate remote collaboration. We also highlight how, at a community level, we can take advantage of online communication platforms for gaining accessibility to conferences and meetings, and for maintaining research networks and community engagement while promoting a more diverse and inclusive community. Overall, we are confident that these practices can support a more inclusive and kinder scientific culture for the longer term.

Next-generation field courses: Integrating Open Science and online learning

As Open Science practices become more commonplace, there is a need for the next generation of scientists to be well versed in these aspects of scientific research. Yet, many training opportunities for early career researchers (ECRs) could better emphasize or integrate Open Science elements. Field courses provide opportunities for ECRs to apply theoretical knowledge, practice new methodological approaches, and gain an appreciation for the challenges of real-life research, and could provide an excellent platform for integrating training in Open Science practices. Our recent experience, as primarily ECRs engaged in a field course interrupted by COVID-19, led us to reflect on the potential to enhance learning outcomes in field courses by integrating Open Science practices and online learning components. Specifically, we highlight the opportunity for field courses to align teaching activities with the recent developments and trends in how we conduct research, including training in: publishing registered reports, collecting data using standardized methods, adopting high-quality data documentation, managing data through reproducible workflows, and sharing and publishing data through appropriate channels. We also discuss how field courses can use online tools to optimize time in the field, develop open access resources, and cultivate collaborations. By integrating these elements, we suggest that the next generation of field courses will offer excellent arenas for participants to adopt Open Science practices.

Consistent trait-environment relationships within and across tundra plant communities

A fundamental assumption in trait-based ecology is that relationships between traits and environmental conditions are globally consistent. We use field-quantified microclimate and soil data to explore if trait-environment relationships are generalizable across plant communities and spatial scales. We collected data from 6,720 plots and 217 species across four distinct tundra regions from both hemispheres. We combined these data with over 76,000 database trait records to relate local plant community trait composition to broad gradients of key environmental drivers: soil moisture, soil temperature, soil pH and potential solar radiation. Results revealed strong, consistent trait-environment relationships across Arctic and Antarctic regions. This indicates that the detected relationships are transferable between tundra plant communities also when fine-scale environmental heterogeneity is accounted for, and that variation in local conditions heavily influences both structural and leaf economic traits. Our results strengthen the biological and mechanistic basis for climate change impact predictions of vulnerable high-latitude ecosystems.

SoilTemp: A global database of near-surface temperature

Current analyses and predictions of spatially explicit patterns and processes in ecology most often rely on climate data interpolated from standardized weather stations. This interpolated climate data represents long-term average thermal conditions at coarse spatial resolutions only. Hence, many climate-forcing factors that operate at fine spatiotemporal resolutions are overlooked. This is particularly important in relation to effects of observation height (e.g. vegetation, snow and soil characteristics) and in habitats varying in their exposure to radiation, moisture and wind (e.g. topography, radiative forcing or cold-air pooling). Since organisms living close to the ground relate more strongly to these microclimatic conditions than to free-air temperatures, microclimatic ground and near-surface data are needed to provide realistic forecasts of the fate of such organisms under anthropogenic climate change, as well as of the functioning of the ecosystems they live in. To fill this critical gap, we highlight a call for temperature time series submissions to SoilTemp, a geospatial database initiative compiling soil and near-surface temperature data from all over the world. Currently, this database contains time series from 7,538 temperature sensors from 51 countries across all key biomes. The database will pave the way toward an improved global understanding of microclimate and bridge the gap between the available climate data and the climate at fine spatiotemporal resolutions relevant to most organisms and ecosystem processes.

Biotic rescaling reveals importance of species interactions for variation in biodiversity responses to climate change

Generality in understanding biodiversity responses to climate change has been hampered by substantial variation in the rates and even directions of response to a given change in climate. We propose that such context dependencies can be clarified by rescaling climate gradients in terms of the underlying biological processes, with biotic interactions as a particularly important process. We tested this rescaling approach in a replicated field experiment where entire montane grassland communities were transplanted in the direction of expected temperature and/or precipitation change. In line with earlier work, we found considerable variation across sites in community dynamics in response to climate change. However, these complex context dependencies could be substantially reduced or eliminated by rescaling climate drivers in terms of proxies of plant-plant interactions. Specifically, bryophytes limited colonization by new species into local communities, whereas the cover of those colonists, along with bryophytes, were the primary drivers of local extinctions. These specific interactions are relatively understudied, suggesting important directions for future work in similar systems. More generally, the success of our approach in explaining and simplifying landscape-level variation in climate change responses suggests that developing and testing proxies for relevant underlying processes could be a fruitful direction for building more general models of biodiversity response to climate change.

Open Science principles for accelerating trait-based science across the Tree of Life

Synthesizing trait observations and knowledge across the Tree of Life remains a grand challenge for biodiversity science. Species traits are widely used in ecological and evolutionary science, and new data and methods have proliferated rapidly. Yet accessing and integrating disparate data sources remains a considerable challenge, slowing progress toward a global synthesis to integrate trait data across organisms. Trait science needs a vision for achieving global integration across all organisms. Here, we outline how the adoption of key Open Science principles-open data, open source and open methods-is transforming trait science, increasing transparency, democratizing access and accelerating global synthesis. To enhance widespread adoption of these principles, we introduce the Open Traits Network (OTN), a global, decentralized community welcoming all researchers and institutions pursuing the collaborative goal of standardizing and integrating trait data across organisms. We demonstrate how adherence to Open Science principles is key to the OTN community and outline five activities that can accelerate the synthesis of trait data across the Tree of Life, thereby facilitating rapid advances to address scientific inquiries and environmental issues. Lessons learned along the path to a global synthesis of trait data will provide a framework for addressing similarly complex data science and informatics challenges.

Intraspecific Trait Variation and Phenotypic Plasticity Mediate Alpine Plant Species Response to Climate Change

In a rapidly changing climate, alpine plants may persist by adapting to new conditions. However, the rate at which the climate is changing might exceed the rate of adaptation through evolutionary processes in long-lived plants. Persistence may depend on phenotypic plasticity in morphology and physiology. Here we investigated patterns of leaf trait variation including leaf area, leaf thickness, specific leaf area, leaf dry matter content, leaf nutrients (C, N, P) and isotopes (δ13C and δ15N) across an elevation gradient on Gongga Mountain, Sichuan Province, China. We quantified inter- and intra-specific trait variation and the plasticity in leaf traits of selected species to experimental warming and cooling by using a reciprocal transplantation approach. We found substantial phenotypic plasticity in most functional traits where δ15N, leaf area, and leaf P showed greatest plasticity. These traits did not correspond with traits with the largest amount of intraspecific variation. Plasticity in leaf functional traits tended to enable plant populations to shift their trait values toward the mean values of a transplanted plants' destination community, but only if that population started with very different trait values. These results suggest that leaf trait plasticity is an important mechanism for enabling plants to persist within communities and to better tolerate changing environmental conditions under climate change.

Transplants, Open Top Chambers (OTCs) and Gradient Studies Ask Different Questions in Climate Change Effects Studies

Long-term monitoring, space-for-time substitutions along gradients, and in situ temperature manipulations are common approaches to understand effects of climate change on alpine and arctic plant communities. Although general patterns emerge from studies using different approaches, there are also some inconsistencies. To provide better estimates of plant community responses to future warming across a range of environments, there have been repeated calls for integrating different approaches within single studies. Thus, to examine how different methods in climate change effect studies may ask different questions, we combined three climate warming approaches in a single study in the Hengduan Mountains of southwestern China. We monitored plant communities along an elevation gradient using the space-for-time approach, and conducted warming experiments using open top chambers (OTCs) and plant community transplantation toward warmer climates along the same gradient. Plant species richness and abundances were monitored over 5 years addressing two questions: (1) how do plant communities respond to the different climate warming approaches? (2) how can the combined approaches improve predictions of plant community responses to climate change? The general trend across all three approaches was decreased species richness with climate warming at low elevations. This suggests increased competition from immigrating lowland species, and/or from the species already growing inside the plots, as indicated by increased biomass, vegetation height or proportion of graminoids. At the coldest sites, species richness decreased in OTCs and along the gradient, but increased in the transplants, suggesting that plant communities in colder climates are more open to invasion from lowland species, with slow species loss. This was only detected in the transplants, showing that different approaches, may yield different results. Whereas OTCs may constrain immigration of new species, transplanted communities are rapidly exposed to new neighbors that can easily colonize the small plots. Thus, different approaches ask slightly different questions, in particular regarding indirect climate change effects, such as biotic interactions. To better understand both direct and indirect effects of climate change on plant communities, we need to combine approaches in future studies, and if novel interactions are of particular interest, transplants may be a better approach than OTCs.

Trait differentiation and adaptation of plants along elevation gradients

Studies of genetic adaptation in plant populations along elevation gradients in mountains have a long history, but there has until now been neither a synthesis of how frequently plant populations exhibit adaptation to elevation nor an evaluation of how consistent underlying trait differences across species are. We reviewed studies of adaptation along elevation gradients (i) from a meta-analysis of phenotypic differentiation of three traits (height, biomass and phenology) from plants growing in 70 common garden experiments; (ii) by testing elevation adaptation using three fitness proxies (survival, reproductive output and biomass) from 14 reciprocal transplant experiments; (iii) by qualitatively assessing information at the molecular level, from 10 genomewide surveys and candidate gene approaches. We found that plants originating from high elevations were generally shorter and produced less biomass, but phenology did not vary consistently. We found significant evidence for elevation adaptation in terms of survival and biomass, but not for reproductive output. Variation in phenotypic and fitness responses to elevation across species was not related to life history traits or to environmental conditions. Molecular studies, which have focussed mainly on loci related to plant physiology and phenology, also provide evidence for adaptation along elevation gradients. Together, these studies indicate that genetically based trait differentiation and adaptation to elevation are widespread in plants. We conclude that a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying adaptation, not only to elevation but also to environmental change, will require more studies combining the ecological and molecular approaches.

Testing assumptions of the enemy release hypothesis: generalist versus specialist enemies of the grass Brachypodium sylvaticum

The enemy release hypothesis (ERH) suggests greater success of species in an invaded range due to release from natural enemies. The ERH assumes there will be more specialist enemies in the native range and that generalists will have an equal effect in both ranges. We tested these assumptions with the grass Brachypodium sylvaticum in the native range (Switzerland) and invaded range (Oregon, USA). We assessed all the kinds of damage present (caused by fungi, insects, mollusk and deer) on both leaves and seeds at 10 sites in each range and correlated damage with host fitness. Only two of the 20 fungi found on leaves were specialist pathogens, and these were more frequent in the native range. Conversely there was more insect herbivory on leaves in the invaded range. All fungi and insects found on seeds were generalists. More species of fungi were found on seeds in the native range, and a higher proportion of them were pathogenic than in the invaded range. There were more kinds of enemies in the native range, where the plants had lower fitness, in accordance with the ERH. However, contrary to assumptions of the ERH, generalists appear to be equally or more important than specialists in reducing host fitness.