Plant traits and aquatic ecosystem functioning under climate change – PONDS

Climate change strongly affects wetlands and their plant communities. It leads to temperature increase which may modify, directly or indirectly through the alteration of biotic interactions, the plant species performances. Project PONDS aims at determining how annual temperature increase modifies the coexistence mechanisms of aquatic plant species and subsequently affects the functioning of a pond ecosystem. The role of the intraspecific variability of morphological and metabolomics traits of aquatic plants in their resistance to the thermal constraints of their habitat combined to plant-plant interactions, will be identified. Consequences of the variations in the functional composition of plant community for aquatic ecosystem productivity and nutrient cycles will be explored. This project will be based on the model of plant communities from the ponds of the Kerguelen Islands.