Warming reduces the cover, richness and evenness of lichen-dominated biocrusts but promotes moss growth: insights from an 8 yr experiment

Mónica Ladrón de Guevara*, Beatriz Gozalo, José Raggio, Angela Lafuente, María Prieto, Fernando T. Maestre

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

51 Scopus citations

Abstract

Despite the important role that biocrust communities play in maintaining ecosystem structure and functioning in drylands world-wide, few studies have evaluated how climate change will affect them. Using data from an 8-yr-old manipulative field experiment located in central Spain, we evaluated how warming, rainfall exclusion and their combination affected the dynamics of biocrust communities in areas that initially had low (< 20%, LIBC plots) and high (> 50%, HIBC plots) biocrust cover. Warming reduced the richness (35 ± 6%), diversity (25 ± 8%) and cover (82 ± 5%) of biocrusts in HIBC plots. The presence and abundance of mosses increased with warming through time in these plots, although their growth rate was much lower than the rate of lichen death, resulting in a net loss of biocrust cover. On average, warming caused a decrease in the abundance (64 ± 7%) and presence (38 ± 24%) of species in the HIBC plots. Over time, lichens and mosses colonized the LIBC plots, but this process was hampered by warming in the case of lichens. The observed reductions in the cover and diversity of lichen-dominated biocrusts with warming will lessen the capacity of drylands such as that studied here to sequester atmospheric CO2 and to provide other key ecosystem services associated to these communities.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)811-823
Number of pages13
JournalNew Phytologist
Volume220
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2018

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Authors. New Phytologist © 2018 New Phytologist Trust

Keywords

  • biocrust cover
  • biological soil crust
  • climate change
  • drylands
  • evenness
  • lichens
  • mosses
  • richness

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Physiology
  • Plant Science

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