Abstract
Early plant primary succession in recently deglacierized terrains is a good indicator of the species losses and gains that affect novel alpine plant communities migrating under the pressure of climate warming. In the tropical alpine -páramo- region of the northern Andes, home to the world's greatest alpine phyto-diversity, forced primary succession will condition the conservation of many species. Using a post-glacial chronosequence between the little ice age and present below the Conejeras glacier (Colombia) as a space-for-time substitution approach, we sought to determine how time since deglacierization affects the composition, the biogeographic origin and the growth form distribution of novel tropical alpine plant communities. Using an array of multivariate techniques and the Dirichlet model, we assessed relationships among plant communities and with environmental factors. Communities established in less than 169 years lacked a number of characteristic and endemic species usually found in the national park Los Nevados, such as Calamagrostis effusa, Senecio isabelis and Espeletia hartwegiana. Moreover, these communities have been colonized by non-native species, e.g., Rumex acetosella. Upright shrubs and large tussock grasses, characteristic of the alpine tropics, established slowly because they required highly organic, slow-developing soils. Taxa of tropical biogeographic origin were under-represented early after deglacierization in comparison with temperate taxa. These results suggest the existence of a strong climatic debt for some native species, tropical growth forms and taxa of tropical origin, which may translate into significant taxonomic and functional losses whereas the few observed gains concern the establishment of non-native species.
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Data availability
All relevant data may be accessible via the VegAndes database upon request. Photographs of the species taken into consideration in the analysis are available at https://identify.plantnet.org/fr/groups/19892283922
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the Joint International laboratory LMI BIOINCA, the University of Los Andes and the IRD. The authors thank the National park Los Nevados for providing access to the study sites.
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35_2022_282_MOESM1_ESM.pdf
Additional supporting information in the online version of this article (see “Supplementary Material”) contains the following: ESM_1: description of the deglacierization zones, ESM_2 – Photograph of the glacier forefront, ESM_3: Species-area relationship, ESM_4: Species list and species characteristics, ESM_5: Temperature at each zone. ESM_6: Details of the Dirichlet regression presented in Fig. 6 Supplementary file1 (PDF 73 kb)
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Anthelme, F., Carrasquer, I., Ceballos, J.L. et al. Novel plant communities after glacial retreat in Colombia: (many) losses and (few) gains. Alp Botany 132, 211–222 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00035-022-00282-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00035-022-00282-1