Evolutionary potential in the Alpine: trait heritabilities and performance variation of the dwarf willow Salix herbacea from different elevations and microhabitats
Alpine ecosystems are seriously threatened by climate change. One of the key mechanisms by which plants can adapt to changing environmental conditions is through evolutionary change. However, we still know little about the evolutionary potential in wild populations of long‐lived alpine plants. Here,...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:4972222 2023-05-15T18:09:26+02:00 Evolutionary potential in the Alpine: trait heritabilities and performance variation of the dwarf willow Salix herbacea from different elevations and microhabitats Sedlacek, Janosch Cortés, Andrés J. Wheeler, Julia Bossdorf, Oliver Hoch, Guenter Klápště, Jaroslav Lexer, Christian Rixen, Christian Wipf, Sonja Karrenberg, Sophie van Kleunen, Mark 2016-05-12 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4972222/ https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2171 en eng John Wiley and Sons Inc. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4972222/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2171 © 2016 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. CC-BY Original Research Text 2016 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2171 2016-08-14T00:13:49Z Alpine ecosystems are seriously threatened by climate change. One of the key mechanisms by which plants can adapt to changing environmental conditions is through evolutionary change. However, we still know little about the evolutionary potential in wild populations of long‐lived alpine plants. Here, we investigated heritabilities of phenological traits, leaf size, and performance traits in natural populations of the long‐lived alpine dwarf shrub Salix herbacea using relatedness estimates inferred from SSR (Simple Sequence Repeat) markers. Salix herbacea occurs in early‐ and late‐snowmelt microhabitats (ridges and snowbeds), and we assessed how performance consequences of phenological traits and leaf size differ between these microhabitats in order to infer potential for evolutionary responses. Salix herbacea showed low, but significant, heritabilities of leaf size, clonal and sexual reproduction, and moderate heritabilities of phenological traits. In both microhabitats, we found that larger leaves, longer intervals between snowmelt and leaf expansion, and longer GDD (growing‐degree days) until leaf expansion resulted in a stronger increase in the number of stems (clonal reproduction). In snowbeds, clonal reproduction increased with a shorter GDD until flowering, while the opposite was found on ridges. Furthermore, the proportion of flowering stems increased with GDD until flowering in both microhabitats. Our results suggest that the presence of significant heritable variation in morphology and phenology might help S. herbacea to adapt to changing environmental conditions. However, it remains to be seen if the rate of such an evolutionary response can keep pace with the rapid rate of climate change. Text Salix herbacea PubMed Central (PMC) Ecology and Evolution 6 12 3940 3952 |
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Original Research Sedlacek, Janosch Cortés, Andrés J. Wheeler, Julia Bossdorf, Oliver Hoch, Guenter Klápště, Jaroslav Lexer, Christian Rixen, Christian Wipf, Sonja Karrenberg, Sophie van Kleunen, Mark Evolutionary potential in the Alpine: trait heritabilities and performance variation of the dwarf willow Salix herbacea from different elevations and microhabitats |
topic_facet |
Original Research |
description |
Alpine ecosystems are seriously threatened by climate change. One of the key mechanisms by which plants can adapt to changing environmental conditions is through evolutionary change. However, we still know little about the evolutionary potential in wild populations of long‐lived alpine plants. Here, we investigated heritabilities of phenological traits, leaf size, and performance traits in natural populations of the long‐lived alpine dwarf shrub Salix herbacea using relatedness estimates inferred from SSR (Simple Sequence Repeat) markers. Salix herbacea occurs in early‐ and late‐snowmelt microhabitats (ridges and snowbeds), and we assessed how performance consequences of phenological traits and leaf size differ between these microhabitats in order to infer potential for evolutionary responses. Salix herbacea showed low, but significant, heritabilities of leaf size, clonal and sexual reproduction, and moderate heritabilities of phenological traits. In both microhabitats, we found that larger leaves, longer intervals between snowmelt and leaf expansion, and longer GDD (growing‐degree days) until leaf expansion resulted in a stronger increase in the number of stems (clonal reproduction). In snowbeds, clonal reproduction increased with a shorter GDD until flowering, while the opposite was found on ridges. Furthermore, the proportion of flowering stems increased with GDD until flowering in both microhabitats. Our results suggest that the presence of significant heritable variation in morphology and phenology might help S. herbacea to adapt to changing environmental conditions. However, it remains to be seen if the rate of such an evolutionary response can keep pace with the rapid rate of climate change. |
format |
Text |
author |
Sedlacek, Janosch Cortés, Andrés J. Wheeler, Julia Bossdorf, Oliver Hoch, Guenter Klápště, Jaroslav Lexer, Christian Rixen, Christian Wipf, Sonja Karrenberg, Sophie van Kleunen, Mark |
author_facet |
Sedlacek, Janosch Cortés, Andrés J. Wheeler, Julia Bossdorf, Oliver Hoch, Guenter Klápště, Jaroslav Lexer, Christian Rixen, Christian Wipf, Sonja Karrenberg, Sophie van Kleunen, Mark |
author_sort |
Sedlacek, Janosch |
title |
Evolutionary potential in the Alpine: trait heritabilities and performance variation of the dwarf willow Salix herbacea from different elevations and microhabitats |
title_short |
Evolutionary potential in the Alpine: trait heritabilities and performance variation of the dwarf willow Salix herbacea from different elevations and microhabitats |
title_full |
Evolutionary potential in the Alpine: trait heritabilities and performance variation of the dwarf willow Salix herbacea from different elevations and microhabitats |
title_fullStr |
Evolutionary potential in the Alpine: trait heritabilities and performance variation of the dwarf willow Salix herbacea from different elevations and microhabitats |
title_full_unstemmed |
Evolutionary potential in the Alpine: trait heritabilities and performance variation of the dwarf willow Salix herbacea from different elevations and microhabitats |
title_sort |
evolutionary potential in the alpine: trait heritabilities and performance variation of the dwarf willow salix herbacea from different elevations and microhabitats |
publisher |
John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
publishDate |
2016 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4972222/ https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2171 |
genre |
Salix herbacea |
genre_facet |
Salix herbacea |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4972222/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2171 |
op_rights |
© 2016 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2171 |
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Ecology and Evolution |
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6 |
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12 |
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3940 |
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3952 |
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1766182024813477888 |