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Sensitivity of seed germination to temperature of a relict tree species from different origins along latitudinal and altitudinal gradients: implications for response to climate change

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Seeds of a relict tree species collected from high latitudes were more sensitive to temperature and warming could accelerate germination.

Abstract

Seed germination is a crucial process in a plant life cycle and is highly vulnerable to environmental change. Studying among-population variation in seed germination in response to environmental and geographic gradients is an important tool, allowing us to understand how plants adapt to different environmental conditions and to predict population dynamics under future climate change. Here, we collected seeds of Euptelea pleiospermum, a relict broad-leaved tree species, from six provenances along latitudinal and altitudinal gradients across its distribution in China. We investigated variation in seed germination percentage and germination timing of seeds from these different origins (low, middle, and high latitudes/altitudes) at three incubation temperatures (15 °C, 20 °C and 25 °C). The key results were as follows: first, seeds collected from high latitudes were more sensitive to temperature and was likely to benefit from the higher incubation temperature with increasing germination percentage and shorter germination timing; second, for seeds across latitudes, germination percentage of central populations was lower than that of marginal populations; seed origin and its interaction with temperature were the major drivers of germination percentage variation; germination timing was significantly affected by incubation temperature, and warming could accelerate germination; third, for seeds across altitudes, both germination percentage and germination timing were not significantly affected by seed origin, incubation temperature, or their interaction. Our results indicate that climate warming may influence the population dynamics of relict tree species by altering their seed germination patterns, especially for the leading-edge populations along latitudinal gradient. It is vital to take inter-population variation across species’ geographic distribution into account when estimating the impact of environmental changes on plant species’ distribution and population persistence.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Xiaohua Li for her assistance with the seed germination experiments. We are grateful to Prof. Simon Queenborough at the Yale University for his assistance with English language and grammatical editing of the manuscript. We also greatly acknowledge two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the early version of this manuscript. This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31570528 and 31770572), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC0503105), and State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change (Grant No. LVEC-2016kfxx).

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  1. Key Laboratory of Aquatic Botany and Watershed Ecology, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430074, Hubei, China

    Hao Wu, Shitong Wang, Xinzeng Wei & Mingxi Jiang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Hao Wu & Shitong Wang

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  1. Hao Wu
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Wu, H., Wang, S., Wei, X. et al. Sensitivity of seed germination to temperature of a relict tree species from different origins along latitudinal and altitudinal gradients: implications for response to climate change. Trees 33, 1435–1445 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00468-019-01871-0

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