High heat tolerance in plants from the Andean highlands: Implications for paramos in a warmer world.

ABSTRACT: Tropical plant species are expected to have high heat tolerance reflecting phenotypic adjustments to warm regions or their evolutionary adaptation history. However, tropical highland specialists adapted to the colder temperatures found in the highlands, where short and prostrated vegetation decouples plants from ambient conditions, could exhibit different upper thermal limits than those of their lowland counterparts. Here we evaluated leaf heat tolerance of 21 tropical alpine paramo species to determine: 1) whether species with restricted distribution (i.e., highland specialists) have lower heat tolerance and are more vulnerable to warming than species with widespread distribution; 2) whether different growth forms have different heat tolerance; and 3) whether species height (i.e., microha

SUBMITTER: Leon-Garcia IV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6834248 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature