Tradeoffs between phenotypic plasticity and local adaptation influence the ecophysiology of the moss, Sphagnum magellani
- PDF / 1,305,191 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 33 Downloads / 244 Views
PHYSIOLOGICAL ECOLOGY – ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Tradeoffs between phenotypic plasticity and local adaptation influence the ecophysiology of the moss, Sphagnum magellanicum Tobi A. Oke1 · Merritt R. Turetsky2 · David J. Weston3 · Jonathan A. Shaw4 Received: 5 March 2020 / Accepted: 13 August 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Bryophytes are a diverse plant group and are functionally different from vascular plants. Yet, their peculiarities are rarely considered in the theoretical frameworks for plants. Currently, we lack information about the magnitude and the importance of intraspecific variability in the ecophysiology of bryophytes and how these might translate to local adaptation—a prerequisite for adaptive evolution. Capitalizing on two ecologically distinct (hummock and hollow) phenotypes of Sphagnum magellanicum, we explored the magnitude and pattern of intraspecific variability in this species and asked whether the environmental-mediated changes in shoot and physiological traits are due to phenotypic plasticity or local adaptation. Size, pigmentation, and habitat type that distinguished the phenotypes in the field did not influence the trait responses under a transplant and factorial experiment. In addition, the magnitude and pattern of trait variability (e.g., branch, stem and capitulum mass) changed with the treatments, which suggest that trait responses were due largely to phenotypic plasticity. The trait responses also suggest that the ecophysiological needs for mosses to grow in clumps, where they maintain a uniform growth may have an overriding effect over the potential for a fixed adaptive response to environmental heterogeneity, which would constrain local adaptation. We conclude that extending the trait-based framework to mosses or making comparisons between mosses and vascular plants under any theoretical framework would only be meaningful to the extent that growth form and dispersal strategies are considered. Keywords Bryophytes · Plant growth form · Intraspecific trait variation · Morphological integration · Environmental heterogeneity · Transplant experiment
Introduction Bryophytes are a diverse plant group—comprising of 15000–20000 species (Shaw et al. 2011) and are functionally different from vascular plants. Yet, plant ecological theories and hypotheses are often presented as universally applicable frameworks. Trait-based ecology is no exception, Communicated by Hermann Heilmeier. * Tobi A. Oke [email protected] 1
Marine Science Institute, The University of Texas Austin, Port Aransas, TX, USA
2
Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
3
Biosciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA
4
Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
emphasizing the importance of intraspecific trait variability to plant performance and fitness (Bolnick et al. 2011; Violle et al. 2012; Siefert et al. 2015; Wright et al. 2016) but primarily from vascular plants perspective. Bryophytes l
Data Loading...
