How do climate change experiments alter plot-scale climate?

International audienceDrought sensitivity is known to affect plant species distribution. However, since every stage of plant life cyclehas its own water requirements, plant performance and productivity is largely influenced by the timing of waterstress. Variation in drought sensitivity between stages might explain recently observed changes in tree agestructure along environmental gradients as well as species-specific responses to drought, yet it has poorly beentaken into account in species distribution models (SDMs). In this paper we discuss how plant responses to wateravailability during various life stages influence species distribution and abundance. We define the role of wateravailability at the stage of gametophyte, zygote, seed and seedling and explain the nature of drought-relatedinjuries. Moreover, we review examples that illustrate how plants adjust their phenology to cope with waterstress at early stages of plant life cycle. We also discuss possible ways forward of incorporating the effect of wateravailability on different stages of the reproductive cycle into correlative and process-based plant species distributionmodels (SDMs) in order to improve the accuracy of their prediction