Climatic variation allows montane willows to escape an adaptive trade‐off

Abstract

Summary Adaptive responses to climate change, based on heritable variation in stress tolerance, may be important for plant population persistence. It is unclear which populations will mount the strongest future adaptive responses. It may be fruitful to identify populations that have escaped trade‐offs among performance traits, which can hinder adaptation. Barring strong genetic constraints, the extent of trade‐offs may depend on spatial relationships among climate variables shaping different traits. Here, we test for climate‐driven ecotypic variation and trade‐offs among drought and freezing sensitivity, and growth, for Lemmon's willow (Salix lemmonii) in a common garden study of 90 genotypes from 38 sites in the Sierra Nevada, USA. Salix lemmonii exhibits ecotypic variation in leaf turgor loss point, a measure of drought sensitivity, from −0.95 to −0.74 MPa along a gradient of spring snowpack. We also find variation in spring freezing sensitivity with minimum May temperature. However, we find no trade‐off, as the climatic gradients shaping these traits are spatially uncorrelated in our study region, despite being negatively correlated across the Sierra Nevada. Species may escape adaptive trade‐offs in geographic regions where climate variables are spatially decoupled. These regions may represent valuable reservoirs of heritable adaptive phenotypic variation.