Population variation in drought-resistance strategies in a desert shrub along an aridity gradient: Interplay between phenotypic plasticity and ecotypic differentiation

Abstract

Adaptations to drought of deciduous and evergreen species in arid environments are associated with resource-acquisitive (drought avoidance) and resource-conservative (drought tolerance) strategies of water use, respectively. Few studies have addressed whether a single species can exhibit both drought avoidance and drought tolerance strategies along an aridity gradient, and none have evaluated the role of ecotypic differentiation and phenotypic plasticity in shaping such strategies. In the desert shrub Encelia canescens, distributed along an aridity gradient in the Atacama Desert, we hypothesized that populations located in sites with lower and more variable rainfall (northern populations) would exhibit patterns of trait means and plasticity reflecting a water-conservative strategy, while populations in less arid and less variable environments (southern populations) would exhibit a water-acquisitive strategy. We also tested the hypothesis that functional variation in trait means and plasticity are not alternative mechanisms of adaptation to the environment. In a common garden experiment using plants from seeds collected from six populations spanning the species distribution range we found that plants from the northern populations were smaller, had fewer leaves, lower photosynthetic rates and had higher plasticity for root:shoot ratios and lower plasticity for leaf shedding, suggesting a resource-conservative strategy compared to plants from the southern populations, which showed a resource-acquisitive strategy. We found no association between variation in trait means and plasticity, which indicates that these are not alternative mechanisms of plant adaptation to environmental variation. Results suggest that E. canescens populations have evolved different strategies to cope with drought stress depending on their location along the Atacama Desert’s aridity gradient. This gives us a better understanding of the ecological and evolutionary processes that drive phenotypic variation among populations.