Journal
OECOLOGIA
Volume 166, Issue 2, Pages 565-576Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00442-010-1878-8
Keywords
Arctic; Alpine; Invasibility; Microclimate; Seed limitation
Categories
Funding
- Danish Natural Science Research Council [21-04-0397]
- ATANS [FP6 506004]
- Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research [852.00.070]
- Department of Education, University and Research of the Basque Government [BF106.15]
- Danish National Research Foundation
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The inclusion of environmental variation in studies of recruitment is a prerequisite for realistic predictions of the responses of vegetation to a changing environment. We investigated how seedling recruitment is affected by seed availability and microsite quality along a steep environmental gradient in dry tundra. A survey of natural seed rain and seedling density in vegetation was combined with observations of the establishment of 14 species after sowing into intact or disturbed vegetation. Although seed rain density was closely correlated with natural seedling establishment, the experimental seed addition showed that the microsite environment was even more important. For all species, seedling emergence peaked at the productive end of the gradient, irrespective of the adult niches realized. Disturbance promoted recruitment at all positions along the environmental gradient, not just at high productivity. Early seedling emergence constituted the main temporal bottleneck in recruitment for all species. Surprisingly, winter mortality was highest at what appeared to be the most benign end of the gradient. The results highlight that seedling recruitment patterns are largely determined by the earliest stages in seedling emergence, which again are closely linked to microsite quality. A fuller understanding of microsite effects on recruitment with implications for plant community assembly and vegetation change is provided.
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