Premium
Do local moisture stress responses across tree species reflect dry limits of their geographic ranges?
Author(s) -
Fensham Roderick J.,
Bouchard David L.,
Catterall Carla P.,
Dwyer John M.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
austral ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.688
H-Index - 87
eISSN - 1442-9993
pISSN - 1442-9985
DOI - 10.1111/aec.12125
Subject(s) - climate change , ecology , biological dispersal , dominance (genetics) , habitat , range (aeronautics) , biology , species distribution , niche , ecological niche , population , biochemistry , materials science , demography , sociology , gene , composite material
Under future climate drought‐induced tree mortality may result in the contraction of species ranges and the reorganization of community composition where abundant and peripheral species exchange their patterns of dominance. Predicting these changes will be challenging because the future suitable habitat may be a mismatch for the current bioclimatic envelope because of discrepancies between the realized and fundamental niche. Here we evaluate the extent of the discrepancy, as applied to tree species in relation to their relative field‐recorded drought sensitivities and their observed range‐wide environmental moisture envelopes. The hypothesis tested was that different species levels of drought‐induced damage at sites where they co‐occur will be positively associated with the minimum moisture availability in the most drought‐prone part of each species current geographic range. We tested the hypothesis using drought damage measurements for 13 A ustralian Myrtaceae (including E ucalyptus ) tree species at a site where all co‐occur, together with 120 years of climate data across their geographical ranges. With limited statistical power the results generated only modest support for the hypothesis suggesting limited capacity to predict future distributions under climate change scenarios. In spite of the poor dispersal capacities of E ucalyptus and allied genera, but consistent with knowledge of breeding systems and genetic variability within E ucalyptus , the findings also suggest that many species have a capacity for rapid adaptive response to climate change, including the vicissitudes of the late Q uaternary.