Climate drives intraspecific differentiation in the expression of growth-defence trade-offs in a long-lived pine species.

ABSTRACT: Intraspecific variation in plant defences is expected to be the result of adaptive and plastic responses to environmental conditions, where trade-offs between growth and defences are thought to play a key role shaping phenotypic patterns in defensive investment. Axial resin ducts are costly defensive structures that remain imprinted in the tree rings of conifers, therefore being a valuable proxy of defensive investment along the trees' lifespan. We aimed to disentangle climate-driven adaptive clines and plastic responses to both spatial and temporal environmental variation in resin duct production, and to explore growth-defence trade-offs. To that aim, we applied dendrochronological procedures to quantify annual growth and resin duct production during a 31-year-period in a Mediterranean pi

SUBMITTER: Vazquez-Gonzalez C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7324371 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature