Intraspecific variation in response to warming across levels of organization: a test withSolidago altissima

Lara Souza,Dave J Weston,Abhijit Karve,Aimée T Classen,Gregory M Crutsinger,Nathan J Sanders

doi:10.1890/es11-00283.1

Lara Souza, Dave J Weston + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.1890/es11-00283.1

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Abstract

Plant species, and the traits associated with them, can help buffer ecosystems to environmental perturbations. Few studies have examined whether within species variation, both among and within populations, can similarly buffer ecosystems to environmental perturbations, such as climatic warming, across levels of organization. Using a dominant plant species in the eastern US, Solidago altissima, we examined whether genotypes of the same species from both southern and northern latitude populations exhibited differential short-term responses to temperature at the cell, leaf, and plant level. At the cell level we quantified the production of reactive oxygen species (by-product of temperature stress) and total oxygen radical antioxidant capacity (which ameliorates temperature stress by-products). At the leaf and plant levels, we measured CO2 assimilation. Increasing temperatures had strong negative impacts on plant-level carbon gain, but weak impacts on cell-level antioxidant capacity. Southern latitude genotyp...

Highlights

Predicting the responses of species to climate change is a fundamental challenge, especially near range boundaries where the effects of warming are likely to be most dramatic (Angert 2011, De Frenne 2011a)
In other words, warming did not have a negative impact on celllevel antioxidant capacity, but it had a strong negative impact on plant-level C gain
We found an interaction between level of organization and population source on the standardized effect of warming (Fig. 1, F 1⁄4 5.05, P 1⁄4 0.0026)

Summary

Introduction

Predicting the responses of species to climate change is a fundamental challenge, especially near range boundaries where the effects of warming are likely to be most dramatic (Angert 2011, De Frenne 2011a). Plant species can vary considerably in morphological and physiological traits both within and across latitudinal gradients and such variation may influence that species’ responses to climate change along with associated ecosystem processes such as net primary productivity (NPP) and carbon (C) cycling (Hooper et al 2005). Crutsinger et al (2006) documented that plots with greater intra-specific diversity in a dominant old-field species (Solidago altissima) led to greater aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) and higher arthropod diversity than plots with lower intra-specific diversity One interpretation of this result is that variance in physiological and morphological traits among Solidago altissima genotypes promoted greater resource complementarity in diversity treatments generating greater ANPP and greater diversity across trophic levels (Hooper et al 2005). Few studies have examined the influence of withinspecies variation, especially comparing individuals from range boundaries (De Frenne et al 2011a), in terms of how such trait variation influences C cycling under warming

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