Davos / Germination Experiment 2023

Climate change is forcing many plants to shift their distributional range to higher latitudes or higher elevations to keep up with their climatic niche. Seed dispersal is the only mobile phase in most plants’ life cycles and determines where seedlings may recruit. Seedling recruitment, in turn, can be influenced by various factors such as the location of the mother plant within its local distributional range, reproductive traits, the genetic diversity of the mother plant, or local micro-climatic conditions. So far, we lack knowledge about the relative importance of these factors in shaping seedling recruitment across and beyond plant distributional ranges.
Using the model system of Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra) and its main seed disperser, the spotted nutcracker (Nucifraga caryocatactes), we examined how the elevational range position of mother trees (i.e., range centre versus range edges), intraspecific variation in reproductive traits (i.e., crop size, proportion of infertile seeds, seed size), and genetic diversity (i.e., heterozygosity) along with micro-climatic conditions of the seed location affect seedling establishment and survival. We conducted a transplant experiment by harvesting 3600 seeds from three different elevations and sowing them across ten destination elevations spanning and exceeding the species' elevational range.
Our results reveal that pine establishment depends strongly on reproductive traits and on seed origin and destination elevations. Seeds from the range centre established best at high elevations outside the pine’s range, while those from upper and lower range edges established best at the pine’s range centre. Large seed size and a high proportion of fertile seeds promoted seedling establishment. In turn, micro-climatic conditions at sowing destinations played a minor role, and the heterozygosity in mother trees did not significantly affect seedling establishment and survival.
Synthesis. Our study highlights the crucial role of the range position in concert with reproductive traits for seedling establishment at distributional range edges, potentially outweighing the effects of micro-climatic conditions and genetic diversity. Understanding the interplay between plant reproductive traits, genetic diversity, and dispersal ability will be essential for projecting future species range limits and informing conservation strategies in the face of climate change.

Data and Resources

This dataset has no data

Additional Info

Field	Value
Geographic coverage
Geographic description	Valleys Flüela and Sertig near Davos, Grisons, Switzerland
Bounding coordinates	North: 46.81738353495515 West: 9.79436154912347 East: 9.92997507766378 South: 46.708193940761866
Temporal coverage
Time period	Begin: August 1, 2022 End: September 30, 2023
Taxonomic coverage
Species	Pinus cembra
Family	Ericaceae
Species	Nucifraga caryocatactes
Other info
Last Updated	September 3, 2025, 07:31 (UTC)
Created	December 14, 2023, 13:40 (UTC)

Responsible parties

Creator and point of contact
Name	Valentin Graf
Organization affiliations	Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F) Goethe University Frankfurt
Creator
Name	Eike Lena Neuschulz
Organization affiliations	Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F) Goethe University Frankfurt

Research data management planning

Estimated volume of created data	Cannot estimate
Data will be stored at (long-term archived)	Dryad repository

Link to this dataset:

https://dataportal.senckenberg.de/dataset/c169dba9-0eb9-44d4-b33a-6240173493f0