Abstract

BackgroundGlobal warming raises serious concerns about the persistence of species and populations locally adapted to their environment, simply because of the shift it produces in their adaptive landscape. For instance, the phenological cycle of tree species may be strongly affected by higher winter temperatures and late frost in spring. Given the variety of ecosystem services they provide, the question of forest tree adaptation has received increasing attention in the scientific community and catalyzed research efforts in ecology, evolutionary biology and functional genomics to study their adaptive capacity to respond to such perturbations.ResultsIn the present study, we used an elevation gradient in the Pyrenees Mountains to explore the gene expression network underlying dormancy regulation in natural populations of sessile oak stands sampled along an elevation cline and potentially adapted to different climatic conditions mainly driven by temperature. By performing analyses of gene expression in terminal buds we identified genes displaying significant dormancy, elevation or dormancy-by-elevation interaction effects. Our Results highlighted that low- and high-altitude populations have evolved different molecular strategies for minimizing late frost damage and maximizing the growth period, thereby increasing potentially their respective fitness in these contrasting environmental conditions. More particularly, population from high elevation overexpressed genes involved in the inhibition of cell elongation and delaying flowering time while genes involved in cell division and flowering, enabling buds to flush earlier were identified in population from low elevation.ConclusionOur study made it possible to identify key dormancy-by-elevation responsive genes revealing that the stands analyzed in this study have evolved distinct molecular strategies to adapt their bud phenology in response to temperature.

Keywords

Response to temperature; Bud phenology; Elevation cline; Gene expression; Hormone quantification; Sessile oak

Published in

BMC Plant Biology
2023, Volume: 23, number: 1, article number: 108
Publisher: BMC

SLU Authors

• Moritz, Thomas

  • Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Botany
Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-023-04069-2

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/121826