| 1. |
- Dahlberg, C. Johan, 1978-
(författare)
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The role of microclimate for the performance and distribution of forest plants
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Microclimatic gradients may have large influence on individual vital rates and population growth rates of species, and limit their distributions. Therefore, I focused on the influence of microclimate on individual performance and distribution of species. Further, I examined differences in how microclimate affect species with contrasting distributions or different ecophysiological traits, and populations within species. More specifically, I investigated the performance of northern and southern distributed forest bryophytes that were transplanted across microclimatic gradients, and the timing of vegetative and reproductive development among northern, marginal and more southern populations of a forest herb in a common garden. Also, I compared the landscape and continental distributions across forest bryophytes and vascular plants and, thus, their distribution limiting factors at different spatial scales. Lastly, I examined the population dynamics across microclimatic gradients of transplants from northern and southern populations of a forest moss. The effects of microclimatic conditions on performance differed among bryophytes with contrasting distributions. There were no clear differences between northern and southern populations in the timing of development of a forest herb or in the population dynamics of a moss. However, within each region there was a differentiation of the forest herb populations, related to variation in local climatic conditions and in the south also to proportion of deciduous trees. The continental distributions of species were reflected in their landscape distributions and vice versa, in terms of their occurrence optima for climatic variables. The variation in landscape climatic optima was, however, larger than predicted, which limit the precision for predictions of microrefugia. Probably, the distributions of vascular plants were more affected by temperature than the distributions of bryophytes. Bryophytes are sensitive to moisture conditions, which was demonstrated by a correlation between evaporation and the population growth rate of a forest moss. We might be able to predict species’ landscape scale distributions by linking microclimatic conditions to their population growth rates, via their vital rates, and infer larger scale distribution patterns.
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| 2. |
- Fogelström, Elsa, 1986-
(författare)
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Plant phenology in seasonal environments
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Phenology, or the seasonal timing life-history events such as emergence, reproduction and senescence will determine the outcome of interactions between plants and both abiotic and biotic aspects of the environment. Such timing is therefore of utmost importance for plants in seasonal environments. In this thesis, I first investigated the factors determining the start, end and length of the growing season for a perennial herb. Secondly, I estimated phenotypic selection on flowering time and investigated to which extent it corresponded to genotypic selection in a natural field setting. Thirdly, I estimated population differentiation in flowering time in a common garden and in the field. Lastly, I experimentally manipulated the synchrony of a perennial herb and its main herbivore to investigate the effects of herbivore phenological preference and plant-herbivore synchrony on the direction of selection on flowering time.I found that flowering individuals emerged earlier in spring than non-flowering individuals and that large individuals senesced later in autumn, suggesting that the length of the growing season is linked to individual condition and resource demands. Phenotypic selection favoured early-flowering individuals, but there was no genotypic selection. I found evidence for genetic population differentiation in flowering time in a common garden but not in the field. This suggests that, although flowering time has a genetic component, the observed variation in flowering time was mainly plastic under natural field conditions. Lastly, I show that constant herbivore preferences of plant phenology, in combination with environmentally driven variation in relative synchrony of the plant and the herbivore, leads to among-year variation in natural selection on flowering time. With this thesis, I contribute to identifying the factors affecting plant phenology as well as of the mechanisms shaping selection on flowering time in perennial plants. Such knowledge is essential for predicting species responses to climate change.
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| 3. |
- Bolinder, Kristina, 1987-
(författare)
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Pollen and pollination in Ephedra (Gnetales)
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Ephedra (Gnetales) is a gymnosperm genus with a long evolutionary history; the first dispersed pollen grains with affinity to the group are known already from the Permian. This thesis focuses on the evolutionary history of the group and different aspects of its pollination mechanisms. Despite the limited number of extant species of the genus (50-60), and a low morphological and genetic divergence among species, there is variation in pollination syndrome in the genus. The prevailing state in Ephedra, and most gymnosperms, is wind pollination. It is therefore surprising that one species, E. foeminea, is insect-pollinated. Together with co-workers I documented the pollination syndromes of E. foeminea and a sympatric species, E. distachya, based on long term field experiments in north-eastern Greece and aerodynamic investigations and calculations. Placing the results into an evolutionary framework reveals that the insect-pollinated species E. foeminea is sister to the remaining (mostly wind-pollinated) genus, and indicates that insect pollination is the ancestral state in the Gnetales. During the course of evolution of the group there has been a shift to wind pollination, which may have played a crucial role for the diversification of the crown group in the Paleogene. Pollination biology is often correlated with the morphology of the pollen such that pollen grains of anemophilous plants are small with a smooth surface, whereas pollen grains of entomophilous plants are larger with an ornamented surface and a covering of pollenkitt. The pollen morphology of Ephedra can be broadly divided into two types: an ancestral type with an unbranched pseudosulcus between each pair of plicae, and a derived type with a branched pseudosulcus between each pair of plicae. Further, the pollen morphology and ultrastructure of the pollen wall in Ephedra are to some degree correlated with the pollination syndrome and capability of long distance dispersal. Pollen of E. foeminea has a denser ultrastructure, as a result a higher settling velocity and is therefore capable of flying shorter distances than does pollen of the anemophilous E. distachya, and other investigated anemophilous species that show a more spacious ultrastructure of the pollen grain. These results can be useful in the reconstruction of the pollination mechanism of extinct taxa of the Ephedra-lineage in the future.
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| 4. |
- Karlsson, Konrad, 1983-
(författare)
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Local adaptation in life history traits and population size estimation of aquatic organisms
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Human society is dependent on healthy aquatic ecosystems for our basic needs and well-being. Therefore, knowledge about how organisms respond and interact with their environments is pivotal. The Baltic Sea is highly affected by human activity and future populations living in its catchment area will have to respond to multiple set of changing abiotic and biotic predictors.The first two papers of this thesis focus on local adaptation, adaptive capacity, and the response to changing temperature, salinity, and food conditions of different Eurytemora affinis populations, a ubiquitous zooplankton species in the Baltic Sea. Development time of zooplankton is an important trait and relates to how fast a population can increase in number. Common garden experiments showed that E. affinis populations from warmer southern areas had shorter development time from nauplii to adult at high temperature compared to populations from colder areas, which indicates an adaptation to temperature. The adaptation was explained by a correlation in development time between higher temperatures, 17 and 22.5 °C, while development between a colder temperature, 12 °C, and the two higher temperatures was uncorrelated. This implies that adaption to short development time at high temperature is unlikely for populations originating from cold temperatures. Hence, global warming will be disadvantageous for northern, compared to southern populations. However, development time is heritable and may change under selection, and may improve the competitive advantage of northern populations. The population with the shortest development time had comparably lower survival at high temperature and low food quality. This represents a cost of fast development, and emphasizes the importance of including multiple stressors when investigating potential effects of climate change.E. affinis inhabits a broad range of habitats from an epi-benthic life in freshwater lakes and river mouths, to pelagic life in estuaries. Paper III aims to link the morphology of different populations to habitat and resource utilization. Results showed that the individuals of a pelagic population were smaller in size and more slender, compared to a littoral population of larger and more fecund individuals. In experimentally constructed benthic and pelagic algae communities, the littoral population produced less offspring than the pelagic population when filamentous benthic diatoms were included. This suggests that filaments disturb their feeding and that littoral populations of E. affinis stay epi-benthic. As pelagic fish typically select larger prey, living close to the bottom probably allows the littoral population to grow larger than the pelagic. These results link morphology to habitat specialization, and show contrasting ecological effects of two E. affinis populations.Paper IV focuses on the recreational angler’s potential role as a citizen scientist. The pike Esox lucius has a stabilizing role in ecosystems as a top consumer and is highly valued by recreational anglers in European lakes and estuaries. Results showed that recreational angling could be used to estimate population size and connectivity of E. lucius in spatial capture-recapture models. The only prerequisite is that anglers practice catch and release, retain spatial data, and take photos of their caught fish. These results show that data from recreational angling can be of potential use for fisheries managers and researchers.
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| 5. |
- Posledovich, Diana, 1984-
(författare)
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Effects of climate on phenological synchrony between butterflies and their host plants
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Shifts in species’ phenologies and phenological asynchronies between the interacting organisms have received a lot of attention in the context of climate change. Changes in temporal overlap between species, caused by phenological asynchrony, make species depending on one another become so separated in time that they can no longer interact. This may have important consequences both for single species, like fluctuations in abundances, and for the functioning of whole communities by creating mismatches between trophic levels and rearrangements of community structure. This thesis focuses on the impact of temperatures on spring timing and phenological synchrony in a herbivorous insect – host plant system, consisting of the orange tipbutterfly Anthocharis cardamines and five of its Brassicaceae host plant species. Paper I demonstrates that diapause duration and winter thermal conditions can determine the timing of spring emergence in the herbivore, and these traits may differ between species with different feeding strategies. In paper II we show that thermal reaction norms of post-winterdevelopment of A. cardamines display cogradient latitudinal variation.Paper III shows that temperature-mediated phenological plasticity of A. cardamines butterflies and a majority of the most used host plant species is similar within populations originating from different latitudes. Thus, the species’ timing appeared well conserved in response to thermal variation. In paper IV we explored the importance of the butterfly’s adult emergence and thermal conditions on the succeeding part of the butterfly’s life-cycle – larval development. The outcome from the interaction was examined for both the insect and the plant side. The degree in phenological overlap between the female butterflies and host plants as well as temperatures during larval development were found to influence larval development but had no effect on plant reproductive fitness. The four papers of the presented thesis demonstrate that developmental preadaptations, evolvedin a herbivore to maintain phenological synchrony with host plants across yearly variation of spring conditions, can prevent disruption of the interaction under a wide range of temperatures. This indicates that temporary constrained interactions are not always vulnerable to decoupling, particularly if they involve generalist strategy.
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| 6. |
- Toftegaard, Tenna, 1982-
(författare)
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Temperature and the synchrony of plant-insect interactions
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Increasing temperatures resulting from climate change have within recent years been shown to advance phenological events in a large number of species worldwide. Species can differ in their response to increasing temperatures, and understanding the mechanisms that determine the response is therefore of great importance in order to understand and predict how a warming climate can influence both individual species, but also their interactions with each other and the environment. Understanding the mechanisms behind responses to increasing temperatures are however largely unexplored.The selected study system consisting of host plant species of the Brassicaceae family and their herbivore Anthocharis cardamines, is assumed to be especially vulnerable to climatic variations. Through the use of this study system, the aim of this thesis is to study differences in the effect of temperature on development to start of flowering within host plant species from different latitudinal regions (study I), and among host plant species (study II). We also investigate whether different developmental phases leading up to flowering differ in sensitivity to temperature (study II), and if small-scale climatic variation in spring temperature influence flowering phenology and interactions with A. cardamines (study III). Finally, we investigate if differences in the timing of A. cardamines relative to its host plants influence host species use and the selection of host individuals differing in phenology within populations (study IV).Our results showed that thermal reaction norms differ among regions along a latitudinal gradient, with the host plant species showing a mixture of co-, counter- and mixed gradient patterns (study I). We also showed that observed differences in the host plant species order of flowering among regions and years might be caused by both differences in the distribution of warm days during development and differences in the sensitivity to temperature in different phases of development (study II). In addition, we showed that small-scale variations in temperature led to variation in flowering phenology among and within populations of C. pratensis, impacting the interactions with the butterfly herbivore A. cardamines. Another result was that the less the mean plant development stage of a given plant species in the field deviated from the stage preferred by the butterfly for oviposition, the more used was the species as a host by the butterfly (study IV). Finally, we showed that the later seasonal appearance of the butterflies relative to their host plants, the higher butterfly preference for host plant individuals with a later phenology, corresponding to a preference for host plants in earlier development stages (study IV).For our study system, this thesis suggest that climate change will lead to changes in the interactions between host plants and herbivore, but that differences in phenology among host plants combined with changes in host species use of the herbivore might buffer the herbivore against negative effects of climate change. Our work highlights the need to understand the mechanisms behind differences in the responses of developmental rates to temperature between interacting species, as well as the need to account for differences in temperature response for interacting organisms from different latitudinal origins and during different developmental phases in order to understand and predict the consequences of climate change.
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