Plasticity in Vulnerability to Cavitation of Pinus canariensis Occurs Only at the Driest End of an Aridity Gradient.

ABSTRACT: Water availability has been considered one of the crucial drivers of species distribution. However, the increasing of temperatures and more frequent water shortages could overcome the ability of long-lived species to cope with rapidly changing conditions. Growth and survival of natural populations adapted to a given site, transferred and tested in other environments as part of provenance trials, can be interpreted as a simulation of ambient changes at the original location. We compare the intraspecific variation and the relative contribution of plasticity to adaptation of key functional traits related to drought resistance: vulnerability to cavitation, efficiency of the xylem to conduct water and biomass allocation. We use six populations of Canary Island pine growing in three provenance t

SUBMITTER: Lopez R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4891331 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature