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Contrasting responses of flowering phenology in C3 and C4 plants shape grassland community structure under global change.

Lu Bai,Guodong Han,LIN-FENG Jiang,T. Crowther,C. Zohner,Kailiang Yu,Zhuwen Xu,Zhongwu Wang,Qian Wu,Yi Zhu,Jinglei Tang,Haiyan Ren

Published 2025 in Ecology

ABSTRACT

Climate change is known to affect plant phenology. Yet, the sensitivity of flowering phenology in dryland regions to climate change, and the potential implications for community composition, remain largely unexplored. Here, we used an 18-year field experiment to investigate the effects of climate warming and nitrogen addition on flowering phenology of four C3 plant species and two C4 plant species, and the cascading effects on the relative abundance of C3 and C4 plants in a desert steppe. Across the past 10 years of the experiment (2013-2022), we found that warming had a greater effect on phenological shifts in C3 than in C4 plants. Warming significantly advanced the flowering time of C3 plants by 4.3 ± 0.1 days and of C4 plants by 2.8 ± 0.1 days, respectively. Warming also reduced the duration of flowering by 1.8 ± 0.1 days for C3 plants but had no effect on C4 plants, and decreased the dominance of C3 plants compared to C4 plants. Nitrogen addition extended the duration of flowering of C4 plants by 3.4 ± 0.2 days and increased their relative dominance, while decreasing the dominance of C3 plants. Structural equation models revealed that these phenological responses were largely driven by soil temperature and soil water availability. Our results demonstrate that the different phenological responses of C3 and C4 plants contribute to shifts in dominance between these plant types in temperate dryland ecosystems under global changes.

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