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High alpine regions are threatened but understudied ecosystems that harbor diverse endemic species, making them an important biome for testing the role of environmental factors in driving functional trait‐mediated community assembly processes. We tested the hypothesis that plant community assembly along a climatic and elevation gradient is influenced by shifts in habitat suitability, which drive plant functional, phylogenetic, and spectral diversity. In a high mountain system (2400–3500 m) Región Metropolitana in the central Chilean Andes (33°S, 70°W). We surveyed vegetation and spectroscopic reflectance (400–2400 nm) to quantify taxonomic, phylogenetic, functional, and spectral diversity at five sites from 2400 to 3500 m elevation. We characterized soil attributes and processes by measuring water content, carbon and nitrogen, and net nitrogen mineralization rates. At high elevation, colder temperatures reduced available soil nitrogen, while at warmer, lower elevations, soil moisture was lower. Metrics of taxonomic, functional, and spectral alpha diversity peaked at mid‐elevations, while phylogenetic species richness was highest at low elevation. Leaf nitrogen increased with elevation at the community level and within individual species, consistent with global patterns of increasing leaf nitrogen with colder temperatures. The increase in leaf nitrogen, coupled with shifts in taxonomic and functional diversity associated with turnover in lineages, indicate that the ability to acquire and retain nitrogen in colder temperatures may be important in plant community assembly in this range. Such environmental filters have important implications for forecasting shifts in alpine plant communities under a warming climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Andean uplift and the concomitant formation of the Diagonal Arid of South America is expected to have promoted species diversification through range expansions into this novel environment. We evaluate the evolution of Argylia , a genus belonging to the Bignoniaceae family whose oldest fossil record dates back to 49.4 Ma. Today, Argylia is distributed along the Andean Cordillera, from 15°S to 38.5°S and from sea level up to 4,000 m.a.s.l. We ask whether Argylia 's current distribution is a result of a range expansion along the Andes Cordillera (biological corridor) modulated by climatic niche conservatism, considering the timing of Andean uplift (30 Ma – 5 Ma). To answer this question, we reconstructed the phylogenetic relationships of Argylia species, estimated divergence times, estimated the realized climatic niche of the genus, reconstructed the ancestral climatic niche, evaluated its evolution, and finally, performed an ancestral range reconstruction. We found strong evidence for climatic niche conservatism for moisture variables, and an absence of niche conservatism for most of the temperature variables considered. Exceptions were temperature seasonality and winter temperature. Results imply that Argylia had the capacity to adapt to extreme temperature conditions associated with the Andean uplift and the new climatic corridor produced by uplift. Ancestral range reconstruction for the genus showed that Argylia first diversified in a region where subtropical conditions were already established, and that later episodes of diversification were coeval with the of Andean uplift. We detected a second climatic corridor along the coastal range of Chile-Peru, the coastal lomas, which allowed a northward range expansion of Argylia into the hyperarid Atacama Desert. Dating suggests the current distribution and diversity of Argylia would have been reached during the Late Neogene and Pleistocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding why some plant lineages move from one climatic region to another is a mayor goal of evolutionary biology. In the southern Andes plant lineages that have migrated along mountain ranges tracking cold-humid climates coexist with lineages that have shifted repeatedly between warm-arid at low elevations and cold habitats at high elevations. Transitions between habitats might be facilitated by the acquisition of common traits favoring a resource-conservative strategy that copes with drought resulting from either low precipitation or extreme cold. Alternatively, transitions might be accompanied by phenotypic divergence and accelerated evolution of plant traits, which in turn may depend on the level of coordination among them. Reduced integration and evolution of traits in modules are expected to increase evolutionary rates of traits, allowing diversification in contrasting climates. To examine these hypotheses, we conducted a comparative study in the herbaceous genus Leucheria. We reconstructed ancestral habitat states using Maximum Likelihood and a previously published phylogeny. We performed a Phylogenetic Principal Components Analysis on traits, and then we tested the relationship between PC axes, habitat and climate using Phylogenetic Generalized Least Squares (PGLS). Finally, we compared the evolutionary rates of traits, and the levels of modularity among the three main Clades of Leucheria. Our results suggest that the genus originated at high elevations and later repeatedly colonized arid-semiarid shrublands and humid-forest at lower elevations. PGLS analysis suggested that transitions between habitats were accompanied by shifts in plant strategies: cold habitats at high elevations favored the evolution of traits related to a conservative-resource strategy (thicker and dissected leaves, with high mass per area, and high biomass allocation to roots), whereas warm-arid habitats at lower elevations favored traits related to an acquisitive-resource strategy. As expected, we detected higher levels of modularity in the clades that switched repeatedly between habitats, but higher modularity was not associated with accelerated rates of trait evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising temperatures and increasing drought in Mediterranean-type climate areas are expected to affect plant–pollinator interactions, especially in plant species with specialised pollination. Central Chile experienced a mega drought between 2010 and 2020 which reached an extreme in the austral summer of 2019–2020. Based on intensive pollinator sampling and floral studies we show that the subalpine form of Mutisia subulata (Asteraceae) is a specialised hummingbird-pollinated species. In a two-year study which included the severest drought year, we quantified visitation frequency, flower-head density, flower-head visitation rates, two measures of floral longevity, nectar characteristics and seed set and monitored climatic variables to detect direct and indirect climate-related effects on pollinator visitation. Flower-head density, nectar standing crop and seed set were significantly reduced in the severest drought year while nectar concentration increased. The best model to explain visitation frequency included flower-head density, relative humidity, temperature, and nectar standing crop with highly significant effects of the first three variables. Results for flower-head density suggest hummingbirds were able to associate visual signals with reduced resource availability and/or were less abundant. The negative effect of lower relative humidity suggests the birds were able to perceive differences in nectar concentration. Reduced seed set per flower-head together with the availability of far fewer ovules in the 2019–2020 austral summer would have resulted in a major reduction in seed set. Longer and more intense droughts in this century could threaten local population persistence in M. subulata. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present results from Lago Negro, a small closed-basin lake adjacent to Lago Rosselot, to examine the vegetation and environmental history of an insufficiently studied sector of Chiloé Continental (41°30′-44°S) in northwestern Patagonia. Lake sediment cores from Lago Negro reveal 27 tephra deposited since ∼12.7 ka, including two prominent rhyodacite tephra marker beds erupted from Volcán Melimoyu, and a stratified basal clastic unit we attribute to meltwater discharge from an ice tongue that originated from Monte Queulat and covered Lago Rosselot during its expanded position, presumably Antarctic Cold Reversal in age. The pollen record shows closed-canopy North Patagonian rainforests since ∼12.7 ka, with variations in species composition and structure that suggest dynamic responses of the vegetation to past environmental changes. Vegetation responses to climate in the Lago Negro record were modulated, sometimes interrupted, by high magnitude and frequent disturbance regimes, most notably during maxima in explosive volcanic activity (∼9.5–7.2 ka and ∼3.6–1.6 ka) and heightened fire activity. Since Lago Negro is the southernmost palynological site so far investigated in the region and is located within a volcanically active sector, it provides a valuable perspective for assessing past vegetation responses along environmental gradients since the last glaciation. When compared with other sites throughout northwestern Patagonia, our record reveals a distinct north-to-south gradient in temperature and precipitation, with peak temperature and rainfall seasonality in the north, and a west-to-east gradient in disturbance regimes, with maximum frequency and magnitude of explosive volcanic events in the east. These gradients have modulated the response of rainforest vegetation to climate forcing at regional scale since ∼12.7 ka. We identify negligible differences in timing for the majority of key vegetation signals during the initial phase of the Lago Negro record, and propose that plant colonization and expansion along the ∼360 km long corridor through the Pacific slope of the northwestern Patagonian Andes was a rapid process during the Last Glacial Termination. • Lago Negro is a small closed-basin lake in Chiloé Continental (CC), northwestern Patagonia. • Organic sedimentation began when Glaciar Rosselot abandoned its ACR maximum. • Rainforests (RF) in CC have responded to climate and intense disturbance since ∼12.7 ka. • RF expansion was synchronous with glacier retreat during the Last Glacial Termination (T1). • Tree migration rates into CC and archipelagoes fall in the "very rapid" category during T1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]