Plant communities, populations and individuals have distinct responses to short-term warming and neighbour biomass removal in two montane grasslands

Aims

Climate change will impact plant communities and populations but also individual plant performance. Most predictive models of community responses to climate change ignore individual‐level biotic interactions despite their known importance for community diversity and functioning. Here, we consider plant fitness and diversity responses to climate change associated factors at three organisational levels: communities, populations and individual plants, to increase our understanding of how plant communities respond to climate change.

Location

Montane grassland, Tasmania, Australia.

Methods

In two plant communities, we manipulated temperature using open‐top chambers and removed random and dominant species biomass. Two years after experimental manipulations, we assessed the impact of treatments on species diversity, community‐ and population‐level functional traits and individual plant fitness.

Results

Species diversity was affected by warming in one of ...