Abstract
Knowledge of the relationship between environmental conditions and species traits is an important prerequisite for understanding determinants of community composition and predicting species response to novel climatic conditions. Despite increasing number of studies on this topic, our knowledge on importance of genetic differentiation, plasticity and their interactions along larger sets of species is still limited especially for traits related to plant ecophysiology. We studied variation in traits related to growth, leaf chemistry, contents of photosynthetic pigments and activity of antioxidative enzymes, stomata morphology and photosynthetic activity across eight Impatiens species growing along altitudinal gradients in Himalayas cultivated in three different temperature regimes and explored effects of among species phylogenetic relationships on the results. Original and target climatic conditions determine trait values in our system. The traits are either highly plastic (e.g., APX, CAT, plant size, neoxanthin, β-carotene, chlorophyll a/b, DEPSC) or are highly differentiated among populations (stomata density, lutein production). Many traits show strong among population differentiation in degree of plasticity and direction in response to environmental changes. Most traits indicate that the species will profit from the expected warming. This suggests that different processes determine the values of the different traits and separating the importance of genetic differentiation and plasticity is crucial for our ability to predict species response to future climate changes. The results also indicate that evolution of the traits is not phylogenetically constrained but including phylogenetic information into the analysis may improve our understanding of the trait-environment relationships as was apparent from the analysis of SLA.
Highlights
Knowledge of the relationship between environmental conditions and species traits is an important prerequisite for understanding determinants of community composition and for developing modeling framework allowing to predict species response to novel climatic conditions (Wright et al, 2001; Diaz et al, 2004; Bruelheide et al, 2018)
Prinzing et al (2008) demonstrated that trait assembly within communities differs between phylogenetically clustered and phylogenetically diverse communities. This may indicate that the patterns of trait-environment variation at the within genus level may differ from patterns across range of unrelated species
For each trait we provide specific prediction of its values assuming that plants exposed to the warmest conditions will suffer the highest stress
Summary
Knowledge of the relationship between environmental conditions and species traits is an important prerequisite for understanding determinants of community composition and for developing modeling framework allowing to predict species response to novel climatic conditions (Wright et al, 2001; Diaz et al, 2004; Bruelheide et al, 2018). Prinzing et al (2008) demonstrated that trait assembly within communities differs between phylogenetically clustered and phylogenetically diverse communities This may indicate that the patterns of trait-environment variation at the within genus level may differ from patterns across range of unrelated species. The variation in traits related to plant ecophysiology and the importance of phenotypic plasticity and genetic differentiation in these traits, likely determining species environmental responses, remains to be explored. One of the biodiversity hotspots of the genus is found in eastern Himalayas and south-east Asia (Song et al, 2003; Yuan et al, 2004; Yu et al, 2016), i.e., the region of our study By selecting this model system, we aim at understanding the determinants of species performance of a group exposed to highly diverse climatic conditions and at the same time facing strong recent climatic changes.
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