Postglacial dispersal limitation of widespread forest plant species in nemoral Europe

Climate is often singled out as the primary range limiting factor at large scales, while other environmental factors, notably soil, are thought to predominate at smaller scales. However, the postglacial migrational lag hypothesis controversially suggests that many species are strongly dispersal-limited and still expanding from their ice age refugia. We investigated the importance of postglacial migrational lag, climate, and soil as range determinants for 47 widespread forest plant species across nemoral Europe (47.0–60.0°N, west of 24.0°E) using regression modeling, information-theoretic model selection, multi-model inference, and variation partitioning. Migrational lag was represented by a measure of accessibility to recolonization from ice age refugia. Twelve species were largely ubiquitous and not analyzed further. For the remaining species, there was strong support for climate, soil, and accessibility to postglacial recolonization. Accessibility accounted for a small to moderate amount of variation, but its model-averaged regression coefficient was stronger than those for climate or soil for 11 species and the second or third strongest coefficient for an additional 10 species. The resulting odds ratios were greater than one for 33 out of 35 species, i.e. adjusted for climate and soil, prevalence for the far majority of the 35 non-ubiquitous species increased with increasing accessibility. There were no differences among growth forms in the importance of accessibility. In contrast, compared to non-boreal species, accessibility had little importance for species with wide boreal distributions, as expected from their more widespread, northern glacial distributions. In conclusion, even the ranges of many widespread forest plant species are probably still moderately to strongly limited by postglacial migrational lag. Therefore, although species ranges are also strongly influenced by climate, we cannot expect most forest plant species to closely track the expected 21st century climatic changes.

[1]  George C. Hurtt,et al.  Reid's Paradox of Rapid Plant Migration Dispersal theory and interpretation of paleoecological records , 1998 .

[2]  J. Stewart,et al.  Cryptic northern refugia and the origins of the modern biota , 2001 .

[3]  Flemming Skov,et al.  Mesoscale distribution of understorey plants in temperate forest (Kalø, Denmark): the importance of environment and dispersal , 2002, Plant Ecology.

[4]  M. Kageyama,et al.  Imprints of glacial refugia in the modern genetic diversity of Pinus sylvestris , 2006 .

[5]  D. Barrington.  Ecological and Historical Factors in Fern Biogeography , 1993 .

[6]  Flemming Skov,et al.  Ice age legacies in the geographical distribution of tree species richness in europe , 2007 .

[7]  Trevor Hastie,et al.  Making better biogeographical predictions of species’ distributions , 2006 .

[8]  J. L. Gittleman,et al.  Quaternary Climate Change and the Geographic Ranges of Mammals , 2009, The American Naturalist.

[9]  Antoine Guisan,et al.  Predictive habitat distribution models in ecology , 2000 .

[10]  Jerald B. Johnson,et al.  Model selection in ecology and evolution. , 2004, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[11]  Jingyun Fang,et al.  Climatic limits for the present distribution of beech (Fagus L.) species in the world , 2006 .

[12]  Jens-Christian Svenning,et al.  Diversity and dominance in palm (Arecaceae) communities in terra firme forests in the western Amazon basin , 2004 .

[13]  G. Lang,et al.  Quartare Vegetationsgeschichte Europas: Methoden und Ergebnisse , 1995 .

[14]  J. Diniz‐Filho,et al.  Red herrings revisited: spatial autocorrelation and parameter estimation in geographical ecology , 2007 .

[15]  H. Jacquemyn,et al.  Possible effects of habitat fragmentation and climate change on the range of forest plant species , 2002 .

[16]  H. Balslev,et al.  Geographical and environmental controls of palm beta diversity in paleo-riverine terrace forests in Amazonian Peru , 2006, Plant Ecology.

[17]  James S. Clark,et al.  Plant migration and climate change , 1997 .

[18]  M. Pasqualetti.  Geographical and environmental analysis. Final report. , 1977 .

[19]  R. Petit,et al.  Identification of refugia and post-glacial colonisation routes of European white oaks based on chloroplast DNA and fossil pollen evidence , 2002 .

[20]  J. Svenning,et al.  Potential Impact of Climate Change on the Northern Nemoral Forest Herb Flora of Europe , 2006, Biodiversity & Conservation.

[21]  J. Concato,et al.  A simulation study of the number of events per variable in logistic regression analysis. , 1996, Journal of clinical epidemiology.

[22]  S. Wright,et al.  Beta-Diversity in Tropical Forests , 2002, Science.

[23]  G. F. Peterken,et al.  Natural Woodland: Ecology and Conservation in Northern Temperate Regions. , 1996 .

[24]  J. Svenning,et al.  Potential impact of climatic change on the distribution of forest herbs in Europe , 2004 .

[25]  C. Dormann.  Effects of incorporating spatial autocorrelation into the analysis of species distribution data , 2007 .

[26]  M. Sykes,et al.  ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Towards an understanding of the Holocene distribution of Fagus sylvatica L. , 2006 .

[27]  T. Dawson,et al.  Predicting the impacts of climate change on the distribution of species: are bioclimate envelope models useful? , 2003 .

[28]  L. Firbank,et al.  An ecological comparison between ancient and other forest plant species of Europe, and the implications for forest conservation , 1999 .

[29]  J. Pausas,et al.  Pteridophyte richness in the NE Iberian Peninsula: biogeographic patterns , 2004, Plant Ecology.

[30]  S. Menard.  Coefficients of Determination for Multiple Logistic Regression Analysis , 2000 .

[31]  W. Thuiller,et al.  Predicting species distribution: offering more than simple habitat models. , 2005, Ecology letters.

[32]  M. McPeek,et al.  The community context of species' borders: ecological and evolutionary perspectives , 2005 .

[33]  Wolfgang Cramer,et al.  The effects of fragmentation and disturbance of rainforest on ground‐dwelling small mammals on the Robertson Plateau, New South Wales, Australia , 1996, Journal of Biogeography.

[34]  T. H. Andel,et al.  Trees or no trees? The environments of central and eastern Europe during the Last Glaciation , 2004 .

[35]  J. Svenning,et al.  Limited filling of the potential range in European tree species , 2004 .

[36]  J. Svenning,et al.  The relative roles of environment and history as controls of tree species composition and richness in Europe , 2005 .

[37]  S. Wright,et al.  Beta Diversity in Tropical Forests , 2002, Science.

[38]  M. Lascoux,et al.  Comparative phylogeography and population structure of European Betula species, with particular focus on B. pendula and B. pubescens , 2007 .

[39]  Ran Nathan,et al.  Over the (range) edge: a 45‐year transplant experiment with the perennial forest herb Hyacinthoides non‐scripta , 2007 .

[40]  Flemming Skov,et al.  Could the tree diversity pattern in Europe be generated by postglacial dispersal limitation? , 2007, Ecology letters.

[41]  I. Dupanloup,et al.  A new scenario for the quaternary history of European beech populations: palaeobotanical evidence and genetic consequences. , 2006, The New phytologist.

[42]  C. Dormann.  Assessing the validity of autologistic regression , 2007 .

[43]  B. Huntley,et al.  An Atlas of Past and Present Pollen Maps for Europe , 1984 .

[44]  Miguel B. Araújo,et al.  Quaternary climate changes explain diversity among reptiles and amphibians , 2008 .

[45]  Kalle Ruokolainen,et al.  Dispersal, Environment, and Floristic Variation of Western Amazonian Forests , 2003, Science.

[46]  A. Lotter,et al.  Holocene expansions of Fagus silvatica and Abies alba in Central Europe: where are we after eight decades of debate? , 2006 .

[47]  Mark L. Taper,et al.  Theoretical models of species' borders: single species approaches , 2005 .

[48]  R. G. Davies,et al.  Methods to account for spatial autocorrelation in the analysis of species distributional data : a review , 2007 .

[49]  M. Araújo,et al.  Equilibrium of species’ distributions with climate , 2005 .

[50]  F. Chapin,et al.  Non‐equilibrium succession dynamics indicate continued northern migration of lodgepole pine , 2003 .

[51]  M. Lascoux,et al.  Absence of geographical structure of chloroplast DNA variation in sallow, Salix caprea L. , 2003, Heredity.

[52]  M. Sykes,et al.  Climate change threats to plant diversity in Europe. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.