Person:
Raggio Quílez, José

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First Name
José
Last Name
Raggio Quílez
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/77615
Affiliation
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Faculty / Institute
Farmacia
Department
Farmacología, Farmacognosia y Botánica
Area
Botánica
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2018 - 20202
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Author: Maestre, Fernando T. × Subject: 581.1 ×

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Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Relative humidity predominantly determines long‐term biocrust‐forming lichen cover in drylands under climate change
    (Journal of Ecology, 2020) Baldauf, Selina; Porada, Philipp; Maestre, Fernando T.; Tietjen, Britta; Raggio Quílez, José; Shurong Zhou
    Abstract Manipulative experiments typically show a decrease in dryland biocrust cover and altered species composition under climate change. Biocrust-forming lichens, such as the globally distributed Diploschistes diacapsis, are particularly affected and show a decrease in cover with simulated climate change. However, the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood, and long-term interacting effects of different drivers are largely unknown due to the short-term nature of the experimental studies conducted so far. We addressed this gap and successfully parameterised a process-based model for D. diacapsis to quantify how changing atmospheric CO2, temperature, rainfall amount and relative humidity affect its photosynthetic activity and cover. We also mimicked a long-term manipulative climate change experiment to understand the mechanisms underlying observed patterns in the field. The model reproduced observed experimental findings: warming reduced lichen cover, whereas less rainfall had no effect on lichen performance. This warming effect was caused by the associated decrease in relative humidity and non-rainfall water inputs, which are major water sources for biocrust-forming lichens. Warming alone, however, increased cover because higher temperatures promoted photosynthesis during early morning hours with high lichen activity. When combined, climate variables showed non-additive effects on lichen cover, and effects of increased CO2 levelled off with decreasing levels of relative humidity. Synthesis. Our results show that a decrease in relative humidity, rather than an increase in temperature, may be the key factor for the survival of the lichen D. diacapsis under climate change and that effects of increased CO2 levels might be offset by a reduction in non-rainfall water inputs in the future. Because of a global trend towards warmer and drier air and the widespread global distribution of D. diacapsis, this will affect lichen-dominated dryland biocrust communities and their role in regulating ecosystem functions worldwide.
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    Warming reduces the cover, richness and evenness of lichen‐dominated biocrusts but promotes moss growth: insights from an 8 yr experiment
    (New Phytologist, 2018) Ladrón de Guevara, Mónica; Gozalo, Beatriz; Lafuente, Angela; Prieto, María; Maestre, Fernando T.; Raggio Quílez, José
    Summary Despite the important role that biocrust communities play in maintaining ecosystem structure and functioning in drylands world-wide, few studies have evaluated how climate change will affect them. Using data from an 8-yr-old manipulative field experiment located in central Spain, we evaluated how warming, rainfall exclusion and their combination affected the dynamics of biocrust communities in areas that initially had low (< 20%, LIBC plots) and high (> 50%, HIBC plots) biocrust cover. Warming reduced the richness (35 ± 6%), diversity (25 ± 8%) and cover (82 ± 5%) of biocrusts in HIBC plots. The presence and abundance of mosses increased with warming through time in these plots, although their growth rate was much lower than the rate of lichen death, resulting in a net loss of biocrust cover. On average, warming caused a decrease in the abundance (64 ± 7%) and presence (38 ± 24%) of species in the HIBC plots. Over time, lichens and mosses colonized the LIBC plots, but this process was hampered by warming in the case of lichens. The observed reductions in the cover and diversity of lichen-dominated biocrusts with warming will lessen the capacity of drylands such as that studied here to sequester atmospheric CO2 and to provide other key ecosystem services associated to these communities.