In peatland ecosystems, plant communities mediate a globally significant carbon store. The effects of global environmental change on plant assemblages are expected to be a factor in determining how ecosystem functions such as carbon uptake will respond. Using vegetation data from 56 Sphagnum-dominated peat bogs across Europe, we show that in these ecosystems plant species aggregate into two major clusters that are each defined by shared response to environmental conditions. Across environmental gradients, we find significant taxonomic turnover in both clusters. However, functional identity and functional redundancy of the community as a whole remain unchanged. This strongly suggests that in peat bogs, species turnover across environmental gradients is restricted to functionally similar species. Our results demonstrate that plant taxonomic and functional turnover are decoupled, which may allow these peat bogs to maintain ecosystem functioning when subject to future environmental change.
Environmental data
Bioclimatic data and environmental data for all 56 European peatland site (geo referenced by longitude [long], latitude [lat] and altitude [ALT]. MAT = Mean annual temperature (°C), TS = Seasonality in temperature, MAP =
Mean annual precipitation (mm), PS =
Seasonality in precipitation, tot_sox = Total sulphur deposition SOx (mg m-2 yr-1), tot_noy = Total oxidized nitrogen deposition (mg m-2 yr-1), tot_nhx = Total reduced nitrogen deposition (mg m-2), PT warm = Lang’s moisture index. The four bioclimatic variables (MAT, TS, MAP, PS) were extracted from the WorldClim database (Hijmans, R. J., Cameron, S. E., Parra, J. L., Jones, P. G. & Jarvis, A. Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas. Int. J. Climatol. 25, 1965–1978 (2005)), and averaged over the 2000-2009 period. Atmospheric deposition data were produced using the EMEP (European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme)-based IDEM (Integrated Deposition Model) model (Pieterse, G., Bleeker, A., Vermeulen, A. T., Wu, Y. & Erisman, J. W. High resolution modelling of atmosphere‐canopy exchange of acidifying and eutrophying components and carbon dioxide for European forests. Tellus B 59, 412–424 (2007)) and consisted of grid cell averages of total reduced (NHx) and oxidised (NOy) nitrogen and sulphur (SOx) deposition. The moisture index (PTwarm) was calculated as the ratio between mean precipitation and mean temperature in the warmest quarter (Thornwaite, C. W. & Holzman, B. Measurement of evaporation from land and water surfaces. USDA Technical Bulletin 817, 1–143 (1942))
Data 1_environmental data.txt
plant community data
Abundance data (% cover) for all vascular plant and bryophyte species from five randomly chosen hummocks and lawns (0.25 m2 quadrats; ten in total) across 56 European Sphagnum-dominated peatlands were collected in two consecutive summers (2010 and 2011). Vascular plants and Sphagnum mosses were identified to the species level. Non-Sphagnum bryophytes were identified to the family level. Lichens were recorded as one group.
Data 2_plant community data.txt
traits vascular plants
Plant functional traits used to calculate functional indices for the vascular plant communities. Traits were extracted from LEDA (Kleyer, M. et al. The LEDA Traitbase: a database of life‐history traits of the Northwest European flora. J. Ecol. 96, 1266–1274 (2008)). Only trait data available for all species our data-set were extracted.
ncomms_Data 3_traits vascular plants.txt
traits Sphagnum
Trait values (means) for Sphagnum spp. C = tissue carbon content (mg g-1), N = tissue nitrogen content (mg g-1), P = tissue phosphorus content (mg g-1), Productivity ( St.w = stem width (mm), l.h.c. = length hyaline cells (µm), w.h.c. = width hyaline cells (µm), l.s.l. = length stem leaves (mm), w.s.l. = width stem leaves. These measured traits were complemented with traits extracted from the literature. These latter traits included plant length (Hill, M. O., Preston, C. D., Bosanquet, S. & Roy, D. B. BRYOATT: attributes of British and Irish mosses, liverworts and hornworts. Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Huntingdon, UK (2007)), spore diameter and capsule diameter (Sundberg, S., Hansson, J. & Rydin, H. Colonization of Sphagnum on land uplift islands in the Baltic Sea: time, area, distance and life history. Journal of Biogeography 33, 1479–1491 (2006)), productivity (Gunnarsson, U. Global patterns of Sphagnum productivity. J. Bryol. 27, 269–279 (2005))
ncomms_Data 4_traits Sphagnum.txt
