A Global Meta-Analysis of Passive Experimental Warming Effects on Plant Traits and Community Properties

Abstract

In order to better predict climate change effects on plants and their communities, we need to improve our understanding of how various plant traits and community properties respond to warming, as well as what contexts contribute to variation in these responses. To address this knowledge gap, we compiled data from 126 in situ passive experimental warming studies on 13 different plant trait and community property responses. We then collected metadata from these studies to define 9 different study contexts spanning environmental, experimental, and plant-level scales. We find that, globally, some traits decrease when warmed (e.g., aboveground N content), while others increase (e.g., plant biomass). We also identify contexts that contribute to variation in plant responses to warming, such as latitude, distance from northern range edge, and plant functional group, but the importance of these contexts varies based on the trait or community property measured. For example, as latitude increases, the effect of warming on reproductive traits becomes stronger, but this latitude-trait relationship did not hold for all traits. Our study highlights how multiple plant traits and community properties respond to warming across the globe, the importance of carefully designing and interpreting the outcomes of climate change experiments, and the need for coordinated warming experiments across varying environmental contexts in order to mechanistically understand and predict plant community responses to climate warming.