Dataset Information

Aridity drives clinal patterns in leaf traits and responsiveness to precipitation in a broadly distributed Australian tree species.

ABSTRACT: Aridity shapes species distributions and plant growth and function worldwide. Yet, plant traits often show complex relationships with aridity, challenging our understanding of aridity as a driver of evolutionary adaptation. We grew nine genotypes of Eucalyptus camaldulensis subsp. camaldulensis sourced from an aridity gradient together in the field for ~650 days under low and high precipitation treatments. Eucalyptus camaldulesis is considered a phreatophyte (deep-rooted species that utilizes groundwater), so we hypothesized that genotypes from more arid environments would show lower aboveground productivity, higher leaf gas-exchange rates, and greater tolerance/avoidance of dry surface soils (indicated by lower responsiveness) than genotypes from less arid environments. Aridity predicted genotype responses to precipitation, with more arid genotypes showing lower responsiveness to reduced precipitation and dry surface conditions than less arid genotypes. Under low precipitation, genotype net photosynthesis and stomatal conductance increased with home-climate aridity. Across treatments, genotype intrinsic water-use efficiency and osmotic potential declined with increasing aridity while photosynthetic capacity (Rubisco carboxylation and RuBP regeneration) increased with aridity. The observed clinal patterns indicate that E. camaldulensis genotypes from extremely arid environments possess a unique strategy defined by lower responsiveness to dry surface soils, low water-use efficiency, and high photosynthetic capacity. This strategy could be underpinned by deep rooting and could be adaptive under arid conditions where heat avoidance is critical and water demand is high.

SUBMITTER: Aspinwall MJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10243541 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Aridity drives clinal patterns in leaf traits and responsiveness to precipitation in a broadly distributed Australian tree species.

Aspinwall Michael J MJ Blackman Chris J CJ Maier Chelsea C Tjoelker Mark G MG Rymer Paul D PD Creek Danielle D Chieppa Jeff J Griffin-Nolan Robert J RJ Tissue David T DT

Plant-environment interactions (Hoboken, N.J.) 20230317 2

Aridity shapes species distributions and plant growth and function worldwide. Yet, plant traits often show complex relationships with aridity, challenging our understanding of aridity as a driver of evolutionary adaptation. We grew nine genotypes of Eucalyptus camaldulensis subsp. camaldulensis sourced from an aridity gradient together in the field for ~650 days under low and high precipitation treatments. Eucalyptus camaldulesis is considered a phreatophyte (deep-rooted spe ...[more]

PMID: 37288162

Similar Datasets

Project description:Temperature is a critical driver of ectotherm life-history strategies, whereby a warmer environment is associated with increased growth, reduced longevity and accelerated senescence. Increasing evidence indicates that thermal adaptation may underlie such life-history shifts in wild populations. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and copy number variants (CNVs) can help uncover the molecular mechanisms of temperature-driven variation in growth, longevity and senescence. However, our understanding of these mechanisms is still limited, which reduces our ability to predict the response of non-model ectotherms to global temperature change. In this study, we examined the potential role of thermal adaptation in clinal shifts of life-history traits (i.e. life span, senescence rate and recruitment) in the Columbia spotted frog Rana luteiventris along a broad temperature gradient in the western United States. We took advantage of extensive capture-recapture datasets of 20,033 marked individuals from eight populations surveyed annually for 14-18 years to examine how mean annual temperature and precipitation influenced demographic parameters (i.e. adult survival, life span, senescence rate, recruitment and population growth). After showing that temperature was the main climatic predictor influencing demography, we used RAD-seq data (50,829 SNPs and 6,599 putative CNVs) generated for 352 individuals from 31 breeding sites to identify the genomic signatures of thermal adaptation. Our results showed that temperature was negatively associated with annual adult survival and reproductive life span and positively associated with senescence rate. By contrast, recruitment increased with temperature, promoting the long-term viability of most populations. These temperature-dependent demographic changes were associated with strong genomic signatures of thermal adaptation. We identified 148 SNP candidates associated with temperature including three SNPs located within protein-coding genes regulating resistance to cold and hypoxia, immunity and reproduction in ranids. We also identified 39 CNV candidates (including within 38 transposable elements) for which normalized read depth was associated with temperature. Our study indicates that both SNPs and structural variants are associated with temperature and could eventually be found to play a functional role in clinal shifts in senescence rate and life-history strategies in R. luteiventris. These results highlight the potential role of different sources of molecular variation in the response of ectotherms to environmental temperature variation in the context of global warming.

Project description:Trees in dry climates often have higher concentrations of total non-structural carbohydrates (NSC = starch + soluble sugars [SS]) and grow less than conspecifics in more humid climates. This pattern might result from the growth being more constrained by aridity than the carbon (C) gain, or reflect local adaptation to aridity, since NSC fuel metabolism and ensure adequate osmoregulation through the supply of SS, while low growth reduces water and C demands. It has been further proposed that C allocation to storage could come at the expense of growth (i.e., a growth-storage trade-off). We examined whether NSC and growth reflect the local adaptation to aridity in Embothrium coccineum J. R. Forst & G. Forst. (Proteaceae), a species with an exceptionally wide niche. To control for any influence of phenotypic plasticity on NSC and growth, we collected seeds from dry (46° 16'S, 71° 55'W, 500 mm year-1) and moist (45° 24'S, 72° 40'W, >2500 mm year-1) climates and grew seedlings in a common garden experiment for 3 years. We then compared the NSC and SS concentrations and pools (i.e., total contents) and the biomass of seedlings at spring, summer and fall. Seedlings from the dry climate had significantly lower biomass and similar NSC concentrations and pools as seedlings from moist climate, suggesting that reduced growth in arid environments does not result from a prioritization of C allocation to storage but that it confers advantages under aridity (e.g., lower transpiration area). Across organs, starch and NSC decreased similarly in seedlings from both climates from spring onward. However, root and stem SS concentrations increased during the growing season, and these increases were significantly higher in seedlings from the dry climate. The greater SS accumulation in seedlings from the dry climate compared with those from the moist climate demonstrates ecotypic differentiation in the seasonal dynamics of SS, suggesting that SS underlie local adaptation to aridity.

Project description:Communities of herbivorous insects on individual host trees may be driven by processes ranging from ongoing development via recent microevolution to ancient phylogeny, but the relative importance of these processes and whether they operate via trophic interactions or herbivore movement remains unknown. We determined the leaf phenology, trunk diameter, genotype, and neighbourhood of sessile oak trees (Quercus petraea), and sampled their caterpillar communities. We found that leaf development across a time period of days related to free-living caterpillars, which disappeared with leaf age. Tree growth across decades is related to increased parasitism rate and diversity of herbivores. The microevolution of oak trees across millennia is related to the abundance of leaf-mining casebearers, which is higher on more homozygous oaks. However, oak genome size was not important for any guild. In contrast to most previous studies, the phylogenetic distance of oaks from their neighbours measured in millions of years was associated with higher abundances of entire caterpillar guilds. Furthermore, on trees surrounded by only distantly related tree species, parasitism tended to be lower. Lower parasitism, in turn, was associated with higher abundances of codominant caterpillar species. Neighbourhoods and traits of trees were also related to community composition and diversity, but not to the average wingspans or specialization of species, consistent with the assembly of herbivore communities being driven by leaf traits and parasitism pressure on trees rather than by insect movement among trees. However, movement in rarer species may be responsible for concentration effects in more phylogenetically distant neighbourhoods. Overall, we suggest that the assembly of insects on a tree is mostly driven by trophic interactions controlled by a mosaic of processes playing out over very different time scales. Comparisons with the literature further suggest that, for oak trees, the consequences of growing amongst distantly related tree species may depend on factors such as geographic region and tree age.

Dataset Information

Aridity drives clinal patterns in leaf traits and responsiveness to precipitation in a broadly distributed Australian tree species.

Publications

Aridity drives clinal patterns in leaf traits and responsiveness to precipitation in a broadly distributed Australian tree species.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets