![Sample our Environment & Sustainability journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5935/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Environment-Sustainability.jpg"})
Abstract
Background: Under climate-change scenarios, rock outcrops, by providing microclimatically diverse habitats, different from those of surrounding zonal vegetation matrix, may serve as climatic refugia and thereby facilitate the persistence of specialist species.
Aim: We tested whether rock outcrops of southern temperate latitudes could act as local refugia for a cold-adapted flora in the face of global warming.
Methods: We related species composition of 50 outcrops and that of their surrounding vegetation to climatic data at local and regional scales to establish whether species distributions reflected differences that could indicate the existence of climatic refugia.
Results: While at a regional scale, species composition of the outcrops across the study area was related to mean annual precipitation and mean annual maximum temperature, locally, southern faces of outcrops had different species and lower maximum temperatures than insolated north faces and surrounding vegetation plots.
Conclusions: South faces of outcrops by providing cool microhabitats, and currently harbouring species not found in the surrounding zonal vegetation matrix, could serve as local refugia for heat-intolerant plants and other microthermic organism. The degree of ‘stability’ of these refugia will depend on the degree of future change in climate. Therefore, it is important to plan protected area networks that maximise local environmental heterogeneity, including the protection of rock outcrops both as refugia for cold-adapted species and as potential stepping stones that would allow dispersal of these species between supportive environments through unfavourable ones.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful for the interesting comments made by Stephan Halloy and two anonymous reviewers on previous versions of this manuscript. We thank Administración de Parques Nacionales (APN) of Argentina for allowing us to work in their parks and reserves, and D. Marty, R. Shanahan, and J. Jones for authorisation to work on private land. We also thank A.I. Bugiolochi, M.L. Suarez, F. Barbar, and H., C., and S. Lambertucci for their assistance during fieldwork. Our special appreciation to A. Cingolani, S. Lambertucci, Donald Bran and A. Ruggiero for useful discussion in relation to this project. CE and KS are scientific research members of the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) of Argentina.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Karina L. Speziale
Karina Lilian Speziale is interested in biodiversity conservation, plant ecology and biogeography, with a focus on Patagonian flora and biological invasions.
Cecilia Ezcurra
Cecilia Ezcurra has research interests in plant taxonomy, evolution and biogeography. She is particularly interested in the biogeographic history and origin of the diversity of the extant flora of the Andes.