Department of Geography and Planning, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZT, UK.
Department of Systematic Zoology, Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Ulica Uniwersytetu Poznańskiego 6, Poznań, 61-614 Poland.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2021 Dec 6;376(1839):20200379. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0379. Epub 2021 Oct 18.
Climate change is reshaping global vegetation through its impacts on plant mortality, but recruitment creates the next generation of plants and will determine the structure and composition of future communities. Recruitment depends on mean seed production, but also on the interannual variability and among-plant synchrony in seed production, the phenomenon known as mast seeding. Thus, predicting the long-term response of global vegetation dynamics to climate change requires understanding the response of masting to changing climate. Recently, data and methods have become available allowing the first assessments of long-term changes in masting. Reviewing the literature, we evaluate evidence for a fingerprint of climate change on mast seeding and discuss the drivers and impacts of these changes. We divide our discussion into the main characteristics of mast seeding: interannual variation, synchrony, temporal autocorrelation and mast frequency. Data indicate that masting patterns are changing but the direction of that change varies, likely reflecting the diversity of proximate factors underlying masting across taxa. Experiments to understand the proximate mechanisms underlying masting, in combination with the analysis of long-term datasets, will enable us to understand this observed variability in the response of masting. This will allow us to predict future shifts in masting patterns, and consequently ecosystem impacts of climate change via its impacts on masting. This article is part of the theme issue 'The ecology and evolution of synchronized seed production in plants'.
气候变化通过影响植物死亡率来重塑全球植被，但植物的繁殖（recruitment）会产生下一代植物，并决定未来群落的结构和组成。繁殖（recruitment）取决于平均种子产量，但也取决于种子产量的年际变异性和植物间的同步性，即众所周知的结实（mast seeding）现象。因此，预测全球植被动态对气候变化的长期响应需要了解结实（mast seeding）对气候变化的响应。最近，出现了数据和方法，可以对结实（mast seeding）的长期变化进行首次评估。通过回顾文献，我们评估了气候变化对结实（mast seeding）的影响的证据，并讨论了这些变化的驱动因素和影响。我们将讨论分为结实（mast seeding）的主要特征：年际变化、同步性、时间自相关性和结实（mast seeding）频率。数据表明，结实（mast seeding）模式正在发生变化，但变化的方向因物种而异，这可能反映了结实（mast seeding）在不同类群中潜在因素的多样性。为了了解结实（mast seeding）的潜在机制而进行的实验，结合对长期数据集的分析，将使我们能够理解结实（mast seeding）反应中观察到的这种可变性。这将使我们能够预测未来结实（mast seeding）模式的变化，从而预测气候变化通过影响结实（mast seeding）对生态系统的影响。本文是主题为“植物中同步种子生产的生态学和进化”的特刊的一部分。
