Abstract
Functional and structural adjustments of plants in response to environmental factors, including those occurring in alpine habitats, can result in transient acclimation, plastic phenotypic adjustments and/or heritable adaptation. To unravel repeatedly selected traits with potential adaptive advantage, we studied parallel (ecotypic) and non-parallel (regional) differentiation in leaf traits in alpine and foothill ecotypes of Arabidopsis arenosa. Leaves of plants from eight alpine and eight foothill populations, representing three independent alpine colonization events in different mountain ranges, were investigated by microscopy techniques after reciprocal transplantation. Most traits clearly differed between the foothill and the alpine ecotype, with plastic adjustments to the local environment. In alpine populations, leaves were thicker, with altered proportions of palisade and spongy parenchyma, and had fewer trichomes, and chloroplasts contained large starch grains with less stacked grana thylakoids compared to foothill populations. Geographical origin had no impact on most traits except for trichome and stomatal density on abaxial leaf surfaces. The strong parallel, heritable ecotypic differentiation in various leaf traits and the absence of regional effects suggests that most of the observed leaf traits are adaptive. These trait shifts may reflect general trends in the adaptation of leaf anatomy associated with the colonization of alpine habitats.
Funder
FWF Austrian Science Fund
Czech Science Foundation
Subject
Plant Science,Ecology,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Reference85 articles.
1. Alpine Plant Life: Functional Plant Ecology of High Mountain Ecosystems;Körner,2003
2. Ökophysiologie der Pflanzen. Leben, Leistung und Streßbewältigung der Pflanzen in ihrer Umwelt;Larcher,2001
3. Low temperature and frost as environmental factors;Sakai,1987
4. Shade Tolerance, a Key Plant Feature of Complex Nature and Consequences
5. The worldwide leaf economics spectrum
Cited by
1 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献
1. Replicated Evolution in Plants;Annual Review of Plant Biology;2023-05-22