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Research article2014Peer reviewedOpen access

Local plant adaptation across a subarctic elevational gradient

Kardol, Paul; De Long, Jonathan; Wardle, David

Abstract

Predicting how plants will respond to global warming necessitates understanding of local plant adaptation to temperature. Temperature may exert selective effects on plants directly, and also indirectly through environmental factors that covary with temperature, notably soil properties. However, studies on the interactive effects of temperature and soil properties on plant adaptation are rare, and the role of abiotic versus biotic soil properties in plant adaptation to temperature remains untested. We performed two growth chamber experiments using soils andBistorta viviparabulbil ecotypes from a subarctic elevational gradient (temperature range: ±3°C) in northern Sweden to disentangle effects of local ecotype, temperature, and biotic and abiotic properties of soil origin on plant growth. We found partial evidence for local adaption to temperature. Although soil origin affected plant growth, we did not find support for local adaptation to either abiotic or biotic soil properties, and there were no interactive effects of soil origin with ecotype or temperature. Our results indicate that ecotypic variation can be an important driver of plant responses to the direct effects of increasing temperature, while responses to covariation in soil properties are of a phenotypic, rather than adaptive, nature.

Keywords

aboveground–belowground linkages; Bistorta vivipara; climate change; ecotypic variation; global warming; plant–soil interactions

Published in

Royal Society Open Science
2014, Volume: 1, number: 3, article number: 140141