Climate manipulations differentially affect plant population dynamics within versus beyond northern range limits

Predicting species’ range shifts under future climate is a central goal of conservation ecology. Studying populations within and beyond multiple species’ current ranges can help identify whether demographic responses to climate change exhibit directionality, indicative of range shifts, and whether responses are uniform across a suite of species.
We quantified the demographic responses of six native perennial prairie species planted within and, for two species, beyond their northern range limits to a three-year experimental manipulation of temperature and precipitation at three sites spanning a latitudinal climate gradient in the Pacific Northwest, USA. We estimated population growth rates (λ) using integral projection models and tested for opposing responses to climate in different demographic vital rates (demographic compensation).
Where species successfully established reproductive populations, warming negatively affected λ at sites within species’ current ranges. Contrarily, w...