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Variation in seedling freezing response is associated with climate in Larrea

  • Physiological ecology - Original research paper
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Abstract

Variation in freezing severity is hypothesized to have influenced the distribution and evolution of the warm desert evergreen genus Larrea. If this hypothesis is correct, performance and survival of species and populations should vary predictably along gradients of freezing severity. If freezing environment changes in the future, the ability of Larrea to adapt will depend on the structure of variation for freezing resistance within populations. To test whether freezing responses vary among and within Larrea populations, we grew maternal families of seedlings from high and low latitude L. divaricata and high latitude L. tridentata populations in a common garden. We measured survival, projected plant area and dark-adapted chlorophyll fluorescence (F v /F m) before and after cold acclimation and for 2 weeks following a single freeze. We detected significant variation in freezing resistance among species and populations. Maternal family lines differed significantly in their responses to cold acclimation and/or freezing for two out of the three populations: among L. tridentata maternal families and among low latitude L. divaricata maternal families. There were no significant differences across maternal families of high latitude L. divaricata. Our results indicate that increased freezing resistance in high latitude populations likely facilitated historical population expansion of both species into colder climates, but this may have occurred to a greater extent for L. tridentata than for L. divaricata. Differences in the structure of variation for cold acclimation and freezing responses among populations suggest potential differences in their ability to evolve in response to future changes in freezing severity.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank R. Fernandez, F. Birrún, E. Fernandez and D. Ravetta for logistical support and G. Correo-Todesco, M. Barr-Lamas and G. Jaramillo for field assistance in Argentina. Thanks also to D. Hanson for the loan of equipment, J. Avritt for help with plant propagation and to two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on the manuscript. Funding provided by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) (#P20RR18754), Graduate Summer Research Stipend from the Sevilleta Long Term Ecological Research site (#DEB-0080529 and #DEB-0217774), the E-MRGE NSF Graduate Teaching Fellows in K12 Education Program (#DGE-0538396) and the University of New Mexico Graduate Student Association’s Graduate Research Development fund. L. divaricata seeds imported into the USA under USDA import permit #3788757.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, 3007 Haworth Hall, 1200 Sunnyside Ave, Lawrence, KS, 66045, USA

    Juliana S. Medeiros

  2. Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA

    Diane L. Marshall & William T. Pockman

  3. Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, N1G 2W1, Canada

    Hafiz Maherali

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  1. Juliana S. Medeiros
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  2. Diane L. Marshall
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Correspondence to Juliana S. Medeiros.

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Communicated by Frederick Meinzer.

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Medeiros, J.S., Marshall, D.L., Maherali, H. et al. Variation in seedling freezing response is associated with climate in Larrea . Oecologia 169, 73–84 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-011-2181-z

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