Plants and climate change: complexities and surprises

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Plant Biology
• Climate Change Science

Background:

• Anthropogenic climate change (ACC) significantly impacts plant biology globally.
• Observed changes in wild species are linked to rising CO2, warming, and altered precipitation.
• Meta-analyses reveal diverse plant responses based on traits, taxonomy, and life history, highlighting mismatches between theory and observation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review plant species' responses to ACC, focusing on deviations from expected patterns.
• To synthesize findings on phenology, distribution, ecophysiology, regeneration, and species interactions under climate change.
• To explore the roles of plasticity and evolution in plant adaptation to ACC.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of approximately 4000 studied species, with a focus on terrestrial plants (42% of total).
• Analysis of impacts on various biological aspects including phenology, distribution, and interactions.
• Identification and examination of unexpected or counter-intuitive plant responses to ACC.

Main Results:

• Conventionally expected plant responses to ACC are largely understood.
• Aberrant, unexpected, or counter-intuitive responses provide greater insight into current and future ACC impacts.
• Plant functional traits showed mixed success, while underutilized approaches like C/S/R strategies improved understanding.

Conclusions:

• Embracing inconclusive or unexpected results is vital for understanding theory-prediction-observation disconnects.
• Community-level experiments replicating multiple ACC aspects are needed.
• Coordinated experiments across networks of field sites are essential for advancing ecological understanding of ACC.