Climate isn't everything: competitive interactions and variation by life stage will also affect range shifts in a...

The extent to which climate controls species' range limits is a classic biological question that is particularly relevant given anthropogenic climate change. While climate is known to play a role in species distributions, biotic interactions such as competition also affect range limits. Furthermore, climatic and biotic controls of ranges may vary in strength across life stages, implying complex range shift dynamics with climate change.

We quantified climatic and competitive influences on growth of juvenile and adult trees of three conifer species on Mt. Rainier, Washington, United States. We collected annual growth data of these trees, which we compared to the competitive environment and annual climate (100 years of data) experienced by each individual.

We found that the relationships between growth and climate and between growth and competition differed by life stage and location. Growth was sensitive to heavy snowpack and cold temperatures at high elevation upper limits (treeline), but growth was poorly explained by climate in low elevation closed-canopy forests. Competitive effects on growth were more important for saplings than adults, but did not become more important at either upper or lower range limits.

In all, our results suggest that range shifts under climate change will differ at leading vs. trailing edges. At treeline, warmer temperatures will lead to increased growth and likely to range expansion. However, climate change will have less dramatic effects in low elevation closed-canopy forest communities, where growth is less strongly limited by climate, especially at young life stages.