Climate interacts with soil to produce beta diversity in Californian plant communities

Background/Question/Methods

Spatially distinct communities can arise through interactions and feedbacks between abiotic and biotic factors.  We suggest that, for plants, patches of infertile soils such as serpentine may support more distinct communities from those in the surrounding non-serpentine matrix in regions where the climate is more productive (i.e., warmer and/or wetter).  Where both soil fertility and climatic productivity are high, communities may be dominated by plants with “fast-growing” functional traits, whereas where either soils or climate impose low productivity, species with “stress-tolerant” functional traits may predominate.  As a result, both species and functional composition may show higher dissimilarity between patch and matrix in productive climates.  This pattern may be reinforced by positive feedbacks, in which higher plant growth under favorable climate and soil conditions leads to higher soil fertility, further enhancing plant growth.

Results/Conclusions

For 96 pairs of sites across a 1200-km latitudinal gradient in California, we found that the species and functional dissimilarities between communities on infertile serpentine and fertile non-serpentine soils were higher in more productive (wetter) regions.  Woody species had more stress-tolerant functional traits on serpentine than non-serpentine soil, and as rainfall increased, functional composition changed toward fast-growing traits on non-serpentine, but not on serpentine soils.  Soil organic matter increased with rainfall, but only on non-serpentine soils, and the difference between soils was positively correlated with plant community dissimilarity.  These results illustrate a novel mechanism wherein climatic productivity is associated with higher species, functional, and landscape-level dissimilarity (beta diversity).