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Belowground mechanism reveals climate change impacts on invasive clonal plant establishment

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journal contribution
posted on 2022-06-03, 02:19 authored by Surendra Bam, JP Ott, JL Butler, L Xu
Climate change and disturbance can alter invasion success of clonal plants by differentially affecting the clonal traits influencing their establishment as young plants. Clonal traits related to the vegetative reproduction of native Pascopyrum smithii and non-native Bromus inermis grass seedlings were evaluated under altered precipitation frequencies and a single grazing event. Pascopyrum smithii maintained similar vegetative reproduction under three simulated precipitation frequencies whereas B. inermis vegetative reproduction declined as precipitation became more intermittent. Vegetative reproduction of the non-native B. inermis was greater than the native P. smithii under all simulated precipitation frequencies except the most intermittent scenario. A single grazing event did not affect either species’ response to intra-annual precipitation variability but did slightly reduce their clonal growth and increase their bud dormancy. In young plants, clonal traits of the invasive grass favored its superior expansion and population growth compared to the native grass except under the most severe climate change scenario. Grassland restoration using native P. smithii seeds would be successful in most years due to its resilient clonal growth in a changing climate. Clonal infrastructure development in young plants is critical to clonal plant establishment and persistence in a changing climate and under disturbed conditions.

Funding

This research has been supported through the South Dakota Agriculture Experiment Station Hatch Project and the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station.

History

Publication Date

2022-12-01

Journal

Scientific Reports

Volume

12

Issue

1

Article Number

ARTN 2860

Pagination

11p.

Publisher

Springer Nature

ISSN

2045-2322

Rights Statement

© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.