Phenological mismatches due to climate change may have important ecological consequences. In a three‐year study, phenological shifts due to experimental warming markedly altered trophic relationships between plants and insect herbivores, causing a dramatic decline of reproductive capacity for one of the plant species. In a Tibetan meadow, the gentian (Gentiana formosa) typically flowers after the peak larva density of a noctuid moth (Melanchra pisi) that primarily feeds on a dominant forb (anemone, Anemone trullifolia var. linearis). However, artificial warming of ∼1.5°C advanced gentian flower phenology and anemone vegetative phenology by a week, but delayed moth larvae emergence by two weeks. The warming increased larval density 10‐fold, but decreased anemone density by 30%. The phenological and density shifts under warmed conditions resulted in the insect larvae feeding substantially on the gentian flowers and ovules; there was ∼100‐fold more damage in warmed than in unwarmed chambers. This radically increased trophic connection reduced gentian plant reproduction and likely contributed to its reduced abundance in the warmed chambers.

• Background and Aims The leaf size–twig size spectrum is one of the leading dimensions of plant ecological variation, and now it is under development. The purpose of this study was to test whether the relationship between leaf size and twig size is isometric or allometric, and to examine the relationship between plant allometric growth and life history strategies in the spectrum. • Methods Leaf and stem characters—including leaf and stem mass, total leaf area, individual leaf area, stem cross-sectional area, leaf number and stem length—at the twig level for 59 woody species were investigated along an altitudinal gradient on Changbaishan Mountain in the temperate zone of China. The environmental gradient ranges from temperate broad-leaved mixed forest at low altitude, to conifer forest at middle altitude, and to sub-alpine birch forest at high altitude. The scaling relationships between stem cross-sectional area and stem mass, stem mass and leaf mass, and leaf mass and leaf area at the twig level were simultaneously determined. • Key Results Twig cross-sectional area was found to have invariant allometric scaling relationships with the stem mass, leaf mass, total leaf area and individual leaf area, all with common slopes being significantly larger than 1, for three altitudinal-zoned vegetation types under investigation. However, leaf mass was found to be isometrically related to stem mass and leaf area along the environmental gradient. Based on the predictions of previous models, the exponent value of the relationship between twig cross-sectional area and total leaf area can be inferred to be 1·5, which falls between the confidence intervals of the relationship at each altitude, and between the confidence intervals of the common slope value (1·17–1·56) of this study. This invariant scaling relationship is assumed to result from the fractural network and/or developmental constraints of plants. The allometric constants (y-intercepts) of the relationships between the stem cross-sectional area and leaf area (both total leaf area and individual leaf area) were found to decrease significantly along the altitudinal gradient. This suggests that the species would support less leaf area at a given twig cross-sectional area with increasing environmental stress. • Conclusions This study demonstrated that plants respond to the environmental gradient by changing the y-intercepts of the relationship between leaf size–twig size, while keeping the exponent value of the allometric relationship as an invariant constant. The allometric growth in the twig size–leaf size spectrum is related to many other components of plant life history strategy, including the well established life history trade-off between efficiency and safety in the hydraulic transport of water.

Top‐down control has been extensively documented in food webs based on living plants, where predator limitation of herbivores can cascade to facilitate plant growth (the green‐world hypothesis), particularly in grasslands and aquatic systems. Yet the ecosystem role of predators in detrital food webs is less explored, as is the potential effect of climate warming on detritus‐based communities. We here show that predators have a “brown‐world” role in decomposer communities via a cascading top‐down control on plant growth, based on the results of an experiment that factorially manipulated presence and size of two predator species as well as temperature (warmed vs. unwarmed). The inclusion of predatory beetles significantly decreased abundance of coprophagous beetles and thus the rate of dung decomposition and productivity of plants growing surrounding the dung. Moreover, the magnitude of these decreases differed between predator species and, for dung loss, was temperature dependent. At ambient temperature, the larger predators tended to more strongly influence the dung loss rate than did the smaller predators; when both predators were present, the dung loss rate was higher relative to the treatments with the smaller predators but comparable to those with the larger ones, suggesting an antagonistic effect of predator interaction. However, warming substantially reduced dung decomposition rates and eliminated the effects of predation on dung decomposition. Although warming substantially decreased dung loss rates, warming only modestly reduced primary productivity. Consistent with these results, a second experiment exploring the influence of the two predator species and warming on dung loss over time revealed that predatory beetles significantly decreased the abundance of coprophagous beetles, which was positively correlated with dung loss rates. Moreover, experimental warming decreased the water content of dung and hence the survival of coprophagous beetles. These results confirm that the “brown‐world” effect of predator beetles was due to cascading top‐down control through coprophagous beetles to nutrient cycling and primary productivity. Our results also highlight potentially counterintuitive effects of climate warming. For example, global warming might significantly decrease animal‐mediated decomposition of organic matter and recycling of nutrients in a future warmed world.

• Temperature is projected to increase more during the winter than during the summer in cold regions. The effects of winter warming on reproductive effort have not been examined for temperate plant species. • Here, we report the results of experimentally induced seasonal winter warming (0.4 and 2.4°C increases in growing and nongrowing seasons, respectively, using warmed and ambient open-top chambers in a Tibetan Plateau alpine meadow) for nine indeterminate-growing species producing multiple (single-flowered or multi-flowered) inflorescences and three determinate-growing species producing single inflorescences after a 3-yr period of warming. • Warming reduced significantly flower number and seed production per plant for all nine multi-inflorescence species, but not for the three single-inflorescence species. Warming had an insignificant effect on the fruit to flower number ratio, seed size and seed number per fruit among species. The reduction in seed production was largely attributable to the decline in flower number per plant. The flowering onset time was unaffected for nine of the 12 species. Therefore, the decline in flower production and seed production in response to winter warming probably reflects a physiological response (e.g. metabolic changes associated with flower production). • Collectively, the data indicate that global warming may reduce flower and seed production for temperate herbaceous species and will probably have a differential effect on single- vs multi-inflorescence species.