Pest defences under weak selection exert a limited influence on the evolution of height growth and drought avoidance in marginal pine populations.

ABSTRACT: While droughts, intensified by climate change, have been affecting forests worldwide, pest epidemics are a major source of uncertainty for assessing drought impacts on forest trees. Thus far, little information has documented the adaptability and evolvability of traits related to drought and pests simultaneously. We conducted common-garden experiments to investigate how several phenotypic traits (i.e. height growth, drought avoidance based on water-use efficiency inferred from δ¹³C and pest resistance based on defence traits) interact in five mature lodgepole pine populations established in four progeny trials in western Canada. The relevance of interpopulation variation in climate sensitivity highlighted that seed-source warm populations had greater adaptive capability t

SUBMITTER: Liu Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9449467 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature