Due to habitat fragmentation and climate change, many plant populations become smaller and more isolated and thus more prone to local extinction. Whereas it is well established for lowland species that plants of small populations have lower individual fitness, alpine species have not been sufficiently studied in this respect. It is also not clear whether relationships between...
Monitoring mountain rangelands is crucial for ensuring the sustainability of pastoral land use. In this study, we employ satellite image analysis to investigate how the seasonal growth patterns in the mountain rangeland ecosystem respond to inter-annual variations in weather conditions along the elevation profile. Our analysis covers nine key habitats in mountain rangelands...
Snowpatch plant communities, which occur in parts of alpine landscapes where snow accumulates and persists well into the summer, are highly sensitive to climate change. The formation of persistent soil seed banks is recognised as a critical component of a plant community’s resilience to a changing environment. However, our understanding of the ecology of snowpatch soil seed banks...
The high plant diversity in alpine to subalpine grasslands is threatened by the abandonment of land use. In addition, changing environmental conditions might lead to vegetation shifts even when traditional land use is maintained, as observed in grasslands in Switzerland during the last decades. Maintaining and restoring the diversity of such grasslands might therefore require...
Seedling establishment is crucial for elevational advance of tree species above the treeline ecotone, but the characteristics and availability of safe sites for tree regeneration in alpine ecosystems are not well understood. To better understand the potential of treeline ecotones to show infilling or upward shifts, we assessed microsite preferences of the conifers Larix decidua...
Understanding alpine plants’ growth dynamics and responses to warming is essential for predicting climate change impacts on mountain ecosystems. Here, we examine growth determinants in the alpine cushion plant Silene acaulis in the Swiss Alps, exploring ontogeny, elevation, and climate influences. We collected 40 Silene individuals and 159 individuals from 38 co-occurring alpine...
Plant reproduction in alpine environments is affected by climate both directly through climate impacts on growth and phenology, and indirectly through impacts on the biotic interactions affecting pollination success. These effects can be highly variable in time and space. In this study we investigated how different abiotic and biotic factors influence reproductive investment and...
There is wide consensus that climate change will seriously impact flowering plants and their pollinators. Shifts in flowering phenology and insect emergence as well as changes in the functional traits involved can cause alterations in plant-pollinator interactions, pollination success and plant reproductive output. Effects of rising temperatures, advanced snowmelt and altered...
Climate change is altering interactions among plants and pollinators. In alpine ecosystems, where snowmelt timing is a key driver of phenology, earlier snowmelt may generate shifts in plant and pollinator phenology that vary across the landscape, potentially disrupting interactions. Here we ask how experimental advancement of snowmelt timing in a topographically heterogeneous...
Pollen-mediated gene flow and spatial genetic structure have rarely been studied in alpine plants that are pollinated by dipteran insects. In particular, it is not clear how different floral traits, such as floral gender, phenology, and ancillary traits, may affect pollen dispersal distance within alpine plant populations. In this study, we conducted a paternity analysis to track...
Polyploidization is pivotal in plant speciation, affecting adaptability, ecological tolerance and specific geographical distribution patterns. While cytotype diversity has been extensively studied in angiosperms and ferns, knowledge in homosporous lycophytes remains very limited. Our study addresses this gap, focusing on the homosporous lycophyte Huperzia selago in Central Europe...
Due to global warming, the worldwide retreat of glaciers is causing changes in species diversity, community composition, and species interactions. However, the impact of glacier retreat on interaction diversity and ecological networks remains poorly understood. An integrative understanding of network dynamics may inform conservation actions that support biodiversity and ecosystem...
Elevational gradients in alpine ecosystems are well suited to study how plant and pollinator communities respond to climate change. In the Austrian Alps, we tested how the taxonomic and functional diversity of plants and their pollinators change with increasing elevation and how this affects plant–pollinator network structure. We measured the phenotypes of flowering plants and...
A little more than 10% of the vascular plant flora native to the European Alps is endemic to this area. It has long been noticed that the distribution of endemics across the Alps is very uneven. While most endemics are found along the southern edge of the Alps, with some also on its western, eastern, and northeastern edges, the northern edge of the Alps more or less between Lake...
While the position of alpine and arctic treelines can be predicted by climatic data, the underlying biological mechanisms are still unclear. In a recent paper in this journal (Körner C, Lenz A, Hoch G (2023) Chronic in situ tissue cooling does not reduce lignification at the Swiss treeline but enhances the risk of 'blue
Throughout the last centuries, the structure and genetic composition of forests have been strongly affected by forest management. Over 30% of European forests are artificially regenerated, very often using translocated forest reproductive material, among these species the Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra L.). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the species was...
Deciphering how plants interact with each other across environmental gradients is important to understand plant community assembly, as well as potential future plant responses to environmental change. Plant−plant interactions are expected to shift from predominantly negative (i.e. competition) to predominantly positive (i.e. facilitation) along gradients of environmental severity...
Studies on the origin and evolutionary history of closely related plants help to understand patterns of diversity of the mountain flora in addition to providing the basis for their identification. The genus Tephroseris includes three endemic taxa with small and disjoint distributions in the high mountains of the Iberian Peninsula and on the Maritime Alps. Tephroseris balbisiana...
In their recent article in Alpine Botany (133:63-67, 2023a), Körner et al. revisit the outcome of an interesting experiment from 2009 (Lenz et al., Plant Ecolog Divers 6:365–375, 2013). Although I appreciate the new focus on cell wall lignification, I disagree with their main conclusion. Rather than questioning the role cold temperatures play in cell wall lignification, the...
Although the Balkan Peninsula belongs to the most mountainous regions of Europe, phylogeographic structure of its alpine flora remains insufficiently understood, especially for species distributed both in the western and eastern parts of the Peninsula. We analyzed Campanula orbelica, a Balkan endemic typical of high-mountain siliceous grasslands, based on the population genetic...
In the Bale Mountains, the ericaceous belt ranges between 3200 and 3800 m asl. Studies indicate an expansion on the Sanetti Plateau at the end of the Late Glacial and during the early Holocene. Currently, only patches of Erica growing between boulders are found on the Plateau, while most of the landscape above 3800 m asl is covered by afro-alpine plants. Driving factors for Erica...
In their 2013 paper, Lenz et al. illustrated how trees growing at the low-temperature limit respond to a chronic in situ warming or cooling by 3 K, by employing Peltier-thermostated branch collars that tracked ambient temperatures. The micro-coring-based analysis of seasonal tree ring formation included double-staining microtome cross sections for lignification, but these data...
Climate warming in mountain areas is increasing faster than the global average, threatening alpine plants. Climate affects many traits including seeds, the longevity of which is important for conservation, facilitating genebank storage. Seeds of alpine species are considered short-lived in storage, but their longevity increases when produced under a warmer parental environment...
Mesoscale heterogeneity of alpine landscapes generates snowmelt gradients resulting in a distinct vegetation zonation from almost snow-free fellfields to long-lasting snowbeds. Although the vegetative trait variation along such gradients has been intensively studied, little is known about whether and how seed germination is adapted to the variable snowpack duration. Here, we...