Poster for INTECOL2013

1. Travel & Training grant
provided by the BES
The Hydroniche project is funded
by the DFG Priority Program 1374
Effect of water fluctuation on the composition and diversityEffect of water fluctuation on the composition and diversity
of terrestrial plant communities –of terrestrial plant communities – a reviewa review
Frederic Clement, Carsten F. Dormann. frederic.clement@biom.uni-freiburg.de
Department of Biometry and Environmental System Analysis, University of Freiburg, Germany
Hours
Days
Seasons
Years
Observational evidence
Experimental manipulation
TEMPORAL VARIABILITY SCALE
Day
Season
Year
Richness - Diversity
Mesic grassland
Diversity
Neo tropical wet forest
Diversity - Composition
Limestone
Coexistence mechanisms
Mesic prairie
Diversity - Composition
Limestone
Diversity - Composition
Semiarid prairie
Composition
Semiarid understorey
Composition
Multi-system
Composition
Mesic pineland
Composition
Mediterranean systems
Diversity - Composition
Wetland
(Hours)
WaterAvailability
Mesic
Dry
Wet
Perspectives
Extract per scale variation with frequency
domain analysis
(eg. wavelet decomposition)
No scale comparisons and use of
restricted tools to quantify the
fluctuations
Current limitations
Experiments are logistically expensive
No experiments on forest ?
New technologies are reducing the cost
Limited quantification of coexistence
mechanisms
With increased heterogeneity:
● composition shift towards more xeric
systems
● diversity increase in experiments but
decrease in most of the natural
observation.
Response depends on scale and system
Preliminary conclusions
What to expect from water fluctuation ?
Composition
Hierarchy of response to
resource pulse.
Fluctuation as a dimension
of the plant's niche
→ Shift to a more
adapted community
Diversity
Potential stabilizing or
equalizing effect on
competition
→ Enable coexistence and
increase richness
Moisture gradient
Growth
Time
Germination
Moisture gradient
WetXeric
Fluctuation
Recent evidences suggest that additionally to the average
water availability, the temporal distribution of water has
significant impact the ecology of plant communities.
At the same time, temporal distribution is expected to
increase under present Climate Change scenarios. This
projection strengthen the necessity to integrate temporal
variability for insight into future
The present work is intended to report and to synthesize
currently available evidence by the mean of systematical
review of the literature.
Introduction