The Infona portal uses cookies, i.e. strings of text saved by a browser on the user's device. The portal can access those files and use them to remember the user's data, such as their chosen settings (screen view, interface language, etc.), or their login data. By using the Infona portal the user accepts automatic saving and using this information for portal operation purposes. More information on the subject can be found in the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. By closing this window the user confirms that they have read the information on cookie usage, and they accept the privacy policy and the way cookies are used by the portal. You can change the cookie settings in your browser.
Ocean acidification studies in the past decade have greatly improved our knowledge of how calcifying organisms respond to increased surface ocean CO 2 levels. It has become evident that, for many organisms, nutrient availability is an important factor that influences their physiological responses and competitive interactions with other species. Therefore, we tested how simulated...
Strong solar irradiation in combination with still air and dry soil can cause prostrate high-mountain plants to heat up considerably and ultimately suffer heat damage. Such heat damage has been repeatedly shown for vegetative structures, but not for reproductive structures, which we expected to be particularly vulnerable to heat. Heat effects on cold-adapted plants may increase with rising...
A widely cited benefit of predator diversity is greater suppression of insect herbivores, with corresponding increases in plant biomass. In the context of a vector-borne pathogen system, predator species richness may also influence plant disease risk via the direct effects of predators on the abundance and behavior of herbivores that also act as pathogen vectors. Using an assemblage of generalist...
Many species will need to adapt to the observed climate change in order to persist. However, research about adaptation or phenotypic plasticity in response to climate change is rare. In particular, field studies are lacking that impose artificial selection for a sufficiently long time to elicit changes in phenotypic and genotypic structure of populations. Here, we present findings for an 8-year field...
Although climate models forecast warmer temperatures with a high degree of certainty, precipitation is the primary driver of aboveground net primary production (ANPP) in most grasslands. Conversely, variations in temperature seldom are related to patterns of ANPP. Thus forecasting responses to warming is a challenge, and raises the question: how sensitive will grassland ANPP be to warming?...
Species affect the dynamics of litter decay through the intrinsic properties of their litter, but also by influencing the environmental conditions imposed by their canopy, roots, and litter layers. We examined how human-induced changes in the relative abundances of two dominant Mediterranean trees— Pinus halepensis and Quercus calliprinos —impact leaf litter decomposition...
Maternal effects influence the phenotype of offspring through non-genetic mechanisms, and thus are important components of individual life-histories and act as drivers of and/or constraints on phenotypic evolution. A maternal effect common in egg-laying vertebrates is provisioning of the yolk with carotenoids, organic pigments that often color sexual ornaments and are hypothesized to play positive...
Feeding strategies can affect the balance between the production of reactive oxygen species and antioxidant defences (i.e. oxidative status). This is ecologically relevant, as variation in oxidative status can in turn strongly affect fitness. However, how animals regulate their oxidative status through their feeding behaviour under natural conditions remains poorly understood. Thus, relating...
A recent unprecedented epidemic of beetle-induced tree mortality has occurred in the lodgepole pine forests of Western North America. Here, we present the results of studies in two subalpine forests in the Rocky Mountains, one that experienced natural pine beetle disturbance and one that experienced simulated disturbance imposed through bole girdling. We assessed changes to soil microclimate...
Dryland ecosystems represent >40 % of the terrestrial landscape and support over two billion people; consequently, it is vital to understand how drylands will respond to climatic change. However, while arid and semiarid ecosystems commonly experience extremely hot and dry conditions, our understanding of how further temperature increases or altered precipitation will affect dryland plant...
The rate of change in resting metabolic rate (RMR) as a result of a temperature increase of 10 °C is termed the temperature coefficient (Q 10 ), which is often used to predict how an organism’s total MR will change with temperature. However, this method neglects a potentially key component of MR; changes in activity level (and thus activity MR; AMR) with temperature may significantly...
Tropical forests are important in worldwide carbon (C) storage and sequestration. C sequestration of these forests may especially be determined by the growth of canopy trees. However, the factors driving variation in growth among such large individuals remain largely unclear. We evaluate how crown traits [total leaf area, specific leaf area and leaf nitrogen (N) concentration] and stem traits...
Two hypotheses—that elevated night-time temperatures due to climate warming would enforce post-fire dormancy of Proteaceae seed due to low moisture, and that periods without rain during summer would exceed desiccation periods tolerated by Proteaceae seedlings—were tested empirically. Enforced dormancy, i.e., the inability to germinate due to an environmental restraint, was tested by measuring seed...
We investigated forest responses to global warming by observing: (1) planted Pinus halepensis forests, (2) an aridity gradient—with annual precipitation ( P ) ranging from ~300 to ~700 mm, and (3) periods of wet and dry climate that included the driest period during at least the last 110 years. We examined: (1) how the length of climatic integration periods to which...
Within-canopy gradients of leaf functional traits have been linked to both light availability and vertical gradients in leaf water potential. While observational studies can reveal patterns in leaf traits, within-canopy experimental manipulations can provide mechanistic insight to tease apart multiple interacting drivers. Our objectives were to disentangle effects of height and light environment...
Climate change is expected to reduce annual precipitation by 20 % and increase its standard deviation by 20 % in the eastern Mediterranean. We have examined how these changes may affect herbaceous aboveground net primary production (ANPP) and its inter-annual coefficient of variation (CV) in natural rangelands along a desert—Mediterranean precipitation gradient, at five sites representing arid, semi-arid,...
After a period of food deprivation, animals often respond with a period of faster than normal growth. Such responses have been suggested to result in decreased chromosomal maintenance, which in turn may affect the future fitness of an individual. Here, we present a field experiment in which a food deprivation period of 24 days was enforced on fish from a natural population of juvenile brown...
Photosynthetic capacity of tree leaves is typically positively related to nutrient content and little affected by changes in growth temperature. These relationships are, however, often poorly supported for tropical trees, for which interspecific differences may be more strongly controlled by within-leaf nutrient allocation than by absolute leaf nutrient content, and little is known regarding photosynthetic...
Set the date range to filter the displayed results. You can set a starting date, ending date or both. You can enter the dates manually or choose them from the calendar.