Abstract
Metrosideros polymorpha, a dominant tree species in the Hawaiian Islands, shows an extreme phenotypic polymorphism both across gradients of climatic/edaphic conditions and within populations, making it a potentially useful model species for evolutionary study. In order to understand how the phenotypic diversity is maintained within populations as well as across populations, we examined the diversities of several leaf and stem functional traits across five elevations and two soil substrates on the volcanic mountain of Mauna Loa, on the island of Hawaii. Leaf dry mass per area (LMA), a key leaf functional trait, was particularly focused on and analyzed in relation to its underlying components—namely, tissue LMA and trichome LMA (LMA = tissue LMA + trichome LMA). Across populations, tissue LMA increased linearly with elevation while trichome LMA showed unimodal patterns with elevation, which were better correlated with temperature and rainfall, respectively. Substantial phenotypic variations were also found within populations. Interestingly, the variations of tissue LMA were often negatively correlated to trichome LMA within populations, which contrasts with the cross-populations pattern, where a strong positive correlation between tissue LMA and trichome LMA was found. This suggests that phenotypic variations within populations were substantially influenced by local ecological processes. Soil depth (an indicator of local water availability) and tree size (an indicator of colonized timing) modestly explained the within-population variations, implying other local environmental factors and/or random processes are also important in local phenotypic diversity. This study provides an insight about how phenotypic diversity of plant species is maintained from local to landscape levels.
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Acknowledgments
We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper. This study was supported by a grant-in-aid for Scientific Research of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan 22255002 to KK and 26711025 to YO.
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This study was originated from the research plan designed by KK and YI. All members were involved in the fieldwork and measurements, and YT and YO performed analyses and lead writing with contributions from all members.
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Communicated by Tim Seastedt.
In this study, we explored the causes of phenotypic diversity in a species known for high levels of variation in the expression of traits of ecological importance. The study is novel in its focus on causes of phenotypic diversity across a range of scales, from local to regional. We successfully showed that different processes influence phenotypic diversity depending on spatial scales.
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Tsujii, Y., Onoda, Y., Izuno, A. et al. A quantitative analysis of phenotypic variations of Metrosideros polymorpha within and across populations along environmental gradients on Mauna Loa, Hawaii. Oecologia 180, 1049–1059 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-015-3416-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-015-3416-1