Warming reduces the cover, richness and evenness of lichen‐dominated biocrusts but promotes moss growth: insights from an 8 yr experiment

• DOI: 10.1111/nph.15000
• Publication Date: 2018-01-30T09:02:44Z
• Authors: Mónica Ladrón de ...; Beatriz Gozalo; José Raggio; Angela Lafuente; María Prieto; Fernando T. Maestre
• Keywords: Biological soil crust

Despite the important role that biocrust communities play in maintaining ecosystem structure and functioning drylands world-wide, few studies have evaluated how climate change will affect them. Using data from an 8-yr-old manipulative field experiment located central Spain, we warming, rainfall exclusion their combination affected dynamics of areas initially had low (< 20%, LIBC plots) high (> 50%, HIBC cover. Warming reduced richness (35 ± 6%), diversity (25 8%) cover (82 5%) biocrusts plots. The presence abundance mosses increased with warming through time these plots, although growth rate was much lower than lichen death, resulting a net loss On average, caused decrease (64 7%) (38 24%) species Over time, lichens colonized but this process hampered by case lichens. observed reductions lichen-dominated lessen capacity such as studied here to sequester atmospheric CO2 provide other key services associated communities.