New paper about the population dynamics of an endangered geophyte, Colchicum bulbocodium

Our new paper by Réka Kiss et al. has been published today about the population dynamics of the spring meadow saffron in Scientific Reports.

The paper is open access and can be downloaded from the journal homepage (please click here).

Reference:

Kiss, R., Lukács, K., Godó, L., Tóth, Á., Miglécz, T., Szél, L., Demeter, L., Deák, B., Valkó, O. (2024) Understanding the effects of weather parameters on the population dynamics of an endangered geophyte supports monitoring efficiency. Scientific Reports 14: 25974. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-76942-5

This paper is a result of a six-year-long monitoring study and one of the final results of the PD OTKA project of Réka. The study of the population dynamics of this beautiful and endangered early-spring geophyte plant has important implications for species conservation. The species has an interesting life cycle and the different life stages have different detectability. The beautiful flowers are easy to detect, but the plants have low detectability in the leaf and capsule production stages, and it is completely hidden underground thereafter. Therefore it is crucial to understand the transitions between the stages to give reliable population estimations. In the paper we describe the transitions between these life stages and the effects of various climatic parameters on the population dynamics of Colchicum bulbocodium.

Abstract

Due to their complex life cycles geophytes are often neglected in conservation programs, despite theyare important elements of early spring communities. Their life cycle is strongly affected by weatherparameters, i.e. temperature, precipitation, and light, but the effects of these parameters are oftencontradictory and show high intra-annual variability even within species. Deeper knowledge about theabiotic factors affecting the population dynamics of geophytes is needed to support the designationof effective conservation plans. We aimed to explore the link between weather parameters andpopulation dynamics of Colchicum bulbocodium, an endangered and strictly protected geophyte. We monitored three life cycle stages (flowering, growing, fruiting) of 1069 individuals in permanent plotsfor six consecutive years. Our results showed that life cycle of C. bulbocodium was strongly relatedto the actual weather parameters; the lagged effect of the previous year was weaker. Increasingtemperature and lack of cold periods had negative effect on all life stages. We highlighted thatpopulation estimation based on the number of flowering individuals in a single year can underestimatepopulation size by 40–83%. Monitoring in years following wet and cold springs and cold winters couldincrease the accuracy of population estimations of the flowering individuals.