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Geographical variation of Artemisia leaf morphology along a large environmental gradient in China

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Abstract

Although it is widely acknowledged that the variation in leaf morphology reflects the adaptation of plants to local environments, we know little about how leaf morphology varies at large scales and which environmental factors drive such variation, especially for closely related species. Along broad climatic and soil gradients in eastern and central China, we evaluated the geographical pattern and the effects of environmental gradients on the variation in leaf geometric morphometrics of 1,041 plants of 60 Artemisia species. Species identity explained the largest variation in leaf geometric morphometrics. Leaf geometric morphometrics exhibited a significant latitudinal pattern. As latitude increased, oblanceolate moderate three-lobed leaves changed gradually to elliptic integrifolious ones. Regional environmental gradients, including mean annual precipitation (MAP), soil organic carbon (SOC) and pH, had significant (but different) effects on leaf geometric morphometrics. These results suggest that although leaf geometric morphometrics of Artemisia are under strong genetic control, they respond significantly to changing environmental conditions. Our study demonstrates that the high responsiveness in leaf morphology to the environment could reflect important adaptation by which plants function efficiently along broad environmental gradients.

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Data availability

Data are available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8046197.

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Funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant numbers 32071524 and 31770514).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China

    Xinyu Hou, Liping Huo & Xuejun Yang

  2. The School of Life Sciences, Shanxi Normal University, Linfen, 041000, Shanxi, China

    Xinyu Hou, Ruiru Gao, Liping Huo & Xiaoxia Yu

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  1. Xinyu Hou
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  2. Ruiru Gao
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  4. Xiaoxia Yu
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Contributions

XY conceived and designed the experiments. XH, RG, LH and XY performed the experiments. XH and XY analysed the data. XH, RG and XY wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ruiru Gao or Xuejun Yang.

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Communicated by Marjana Westergren.

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Hou, X., Gao, R., Huo, L. et al. Geographical variation of Artemisia leaf morphology along a large environmental gradient in China. Plant Ecol 224, 659–667 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-023-01332-2

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