The flower does not open in the city: evolution of plant reproductive traits of Portulaca oleracea in urban populations.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The impact of urbanization on plant evolution, particularly the evolution of reproductive traits, remains largely unknown. In this study, we aimed to investigate the consequences of urbanization on the reproductive traits of Portulaca oleracea in the Kanto region of Japan. Portulaca oleracea has a unique cleistogamous reproductive system, which consists of genetically determined chasmogamous (open, CH) and cleistogamous (closed, CL) plants. METHODS: We collected seeds of P. oleracea from ten populations in rural areas and ten populations in urban areas. In a common garden experiment, we recorded the type of flowers (CH or CL), reproductive phenology and seed production. KEY RESULTS: All individuals produced either CH or CL flowers, allowing us to classify them as either CH or CL plants. We observed a significant difference in the prevalence of CH and CL plants between rural and urban populations: the number of CH plants was generally low and was particularly low among urban individuals. Compared to CH plants, CL plants showed earlier phenology and produced heavier seeds, which is consistent with stress avoidance in response to heat and drought stress conditions in urban areas. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that urbanization may drive an evolutionary change in the cleistogamous reproductive system of P. oleracea. CL plants with earlier phenology and larger seeds might be better adapted to urban environments, where they are subjected to harsh heat and drought stress.

Complex range shifts among forest functional types under the contemporary warming.

The direction and magnitude of species distribution shifts tend to differ among species and functional types (FTs). Quantifying functional trait variation and species interactions will improve our understanding of the complex mechanisms that govern ecosystem dynamics and their responses to climate change. Here, we analyzed differences in the juvenile and adult temperature ranges of Japanese tree species at the mean, colder edge, and warmer edge of their distributions to reveal how functional traits affect interactions between different FT groups (e.g., deciduous and evergreen broad-leaved trees), using linear models and permutation tests. Overall, juveniles preferred cooler sites, but with high variation. The variation among species was partly explained by the difference in seed mass where species with lighter seeds tend to colonize colder sites. On the other hand, the distribution range of FTs showed complex behavior at the ecotones of different FTs. Specifically, in three of eight ecotones, nonparallel range shifts between FTs were detected, which includes cold shifting in deciduous broad-leaved FT where a warm shift by subalpine FT happened, and cold shifting in subtropical FT where warm shifts by either the deciduous broad-leaved or the evergreen broad-leaved FTs happened. Our results suggest that past warming has caused a general cold shift at species level, whereas different mechanisms, such as light seeds disperse farther in distribution's colder edge and heavy seeds (e.g., evergreen broad-leaved) compete better in warmer edge, create nonparallel responses of FT distribution ranges leading to the observed homogenization at several ecotones among FTs. These complex range shifts at FT level have crucial implications for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Null model approaches to evaluating the relative role of different assembly processes in shaping ecological communities.

Various local processes simultaneously shape ecological assemblages. ß-diversity is a useful metric for inferring the underlying mechanisms of community assembly. However, ß-diversity is not independent of γ-diversity, which may mask the local mechanisms that govern community processes across regions. Recent approaches that rely on an abundance-based null model could solve this sampling issue. However, if abundance varies widely across a region, the relative roles of deterministic and stochastic processes may be substantially misestimated. Furthermore, there is additional uncertainty as to whether null models used to correct γ-dependence in ß-diversity should be independent of the observed patterns of species abundance distributions or whether the models should reflect these patterns. Here, we aim to test what null models with various constraints imply about the underlying processes shaping ß-diversity. First, we found that an abundance-driven sampling effect could substantially influence the calculation of γ-corrected ß-diversity. Second, we found that the null models that preserve the species abundance patterns could better reflect empirical patterns of spatial organization of individuals. The different implications generated from different applications of the null model approach therefore suggest that there are still frontiers regarding how local processes that shape species assemblages should be quantified. Carefully exploring each facet within different assembly processes is important.

Assessing ecosystem vulnerability under severe uncertainty of global climate change.

Assessing the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of species, communities, and ecosystems is essential for successful conservation. Climate change, however, induces extreme uncertainty in various pathways of assessments, which hampers robust decision-making for conservation. Here, we developed a framework that allows us to quantify the level of acceptable uncertainty as a metric of ecosystem robustness, considering the uncertainty due to climate change. Under the framework, utilizing a key concept from info-gap decision theory, vulnerability is measured as the inverse of maximum acceptable uncertainty to fulfill the minimum required goal for conservation. We applied the framework to 42 natural forest ecosystems and assessed their acceptable uncertainties in terms of maintenance of species richness and forest functional type. Based on best-guess estimate of future temperature in various GCM models and RCP scenarios, and assuming that tree species survival is primarily determined by mean annual temperature, we performed simulations with increasing deviation from the best-guess temperature. Our simulations indicated that the acceptable uncertainty varied greatly among the forest plots, presumably reflecting the distribution of ecological traits and niches among species within the communities. Our framework provides acceptable uncertainty as an operational metric of ecosystem robustness under uncertainty, while incorporating both system properties and socioeconomic conditions. We argue that our framework can enhance social consensus building and decision-making in the face of the extreme uncertainty induced by global climate change.

Current site planning of medium to large solar power systems accelerates the loss of the remaining semi-natural and agricultural habitats.

The global transition to renewable energy sources has accelerated to mitigate the effects of global climate change. Sudden increases in solar power facilities have caused the physical destruction of wildlife habitats, thereby resulting in the decline of biodiversity and ecosystem functions. However, previous assessments have been based on the environmental impact of large solar photovoltaics (PVs). The impact of medium-sized PV facilities (0.5-10 MW), which can alter small habitat patches through the accumulation of installations has not been assessed. Here, we quantified the amount of habitat loss directly related to the construction of PV facilities with different size classes and estimated their siting attributes using construction patterns in Japan and South Korea. We identified that a comparable amount of natural and semi-natural habitats were lost due to the recent installation of medium solar facilities (approximately 66.36 and 85.73% of the overall loss in Japan and South Korea, respectively). Compared to large solar PVs, medium PV installations resulted in a higher area loss of semi-natural habitats, including secondary/planted forests, secondary/artificial grasslands, and agricultural lands. The siting attributes of medium and large solar PV facilities indicated a preference for cost-based site selection rather than prioritizing habitat protection for biodiversity conservation. Moreover, even conservation areas were developed when economic and topological conditions were suitable for energy production. Our simulations indicate that increasing the construction of PVs in urban areas could help reduce the loss of natural and semi-natural habitats. To improve the renewable energy share while mitigating the impacts on biodiversity, our results stress the need for a proactive assessment to enforce sustainable site-selection criteria for solar PVs in renewable energy initiatives. The revised criteria should consider the cumulative impacts of varied size classes of solar power facilities, including medium PVs, and the diverse aspects of the ecological value of natural habitats.

Investigating effect of climate warming on the population declines of Sympetrum frequens during the 1990s in three regions in Japan.

Climate warming is of concern as a key factor in the worldwide decline in insect populations. In Japan, numbers of a common dragonfly in rice paddy fields, Sympetrum frequens, decreased sharply in the 1990s. Because S. frequens migrates to cooler mountains in summer, climate warming has been suggested as one of the main causes of the population decline in addition to agronomic factors. Here, we analysed the relation between summer temperatures and population densities of S. frequens and the related S. infuscatum, which does not migrate to mountains in summer, using published population monitoring data and temperature data from three regions (Toyama, Ishikawa, and Shizuoka) in Japan. Decadal differences in summer temperatures lay within the range of fluctuations among years, suggesting that an increase in summer temperatures cannot explain the past sharp population declines. However, regression analyses using monitoring data from Toyama showed that the population dynamics of both species in autumn are negatively correlated with summer temperatures in the same year. These results suggest that high temperatures in summer directly affect adult mortality to an extent that results in a decrease in population growth.

Author Correction: Investigating effect of climate warming on the population declines of Sympetrum frequens during the 1990s in three regions in Japan.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Land abandonment and changes in snow cover period accelerate range expansions of sika deer.

Ongoing climate change and land-use change have the potential to substantially alter the distribution of large herbivores. This may result in drastic changes in ecosystems by changing plant-herbivore interactions. Here, we developed a model explaining sika deer persistence and colonization between 25 years in terms of neighborhood occupancy and habitat suitability. We used climatic, land-use, and topographic variables to calculate the habitat suitability and evaluated the contributions of the variables to past range changes of sika deer. We used this model to predict the changes in the range of sika deer over the next 100 years under four scenario groups with the combination of land-use change and climate change. Our results showed that both climate change and land-use change had affected the range of sika deer in the past 25 years. Habitat suitability increased in northern or mountainous regions, which account for 71.6% of Japan, in line with a decrease in the snow cover period. Habitat suitability decreased in suburban areas, which account for 28.4% of Japan, corresponding to land-use changes related to urbanization. In the next 100 years, the decrease in snow cover period and the increase in land abandonment were predicted to accelerate the range expansion of sika deer. Comparison of these two driving factors revealed that climate change will contribute more to range expansion, particularly from the 2070s onward. In scenarios that assumed the influence of both climate change and land-use change, the total sika deer range increased by between +4.6% and +11.9% from the baseline scenario. Climate change and land-use change will require additional efforts for future management of sika deer, particularly in the long term.