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When the same is not the same: phenotypic variation reveals different plant ecological strategies within species occurring in distinct Neotropical savanna habitats

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Abstract

Variations in abiotic characteristics such as soil water availability and fertility impose different selective pressures on plant populations. This may produce intraspecific variability in functional traits, even at a fine spatial scale. We investigated whether functional traits related to water-use efficiency, resource-retention strategy, soil nutrient acquisition, and fire tolerance differ in species that occur in two different habitats of Brazilian Cerrado: rocky savannas and savanna woodlands. Rocky savannas occur over sandstone, quartzite outcrops and have shallow nutrient-poor and low-moisture rocky soils, while savanna woodlands occur over well-drained and deep soils with frequent fire regimes. We measured nine functional traits of 40 tree species that occur in both habitats. Rocky savanna individuals exhibited a greater water-use efficiency strategy. The resource-retention strategy in rocky savanna individuals was corroborated by lower adult maximum height. However, despite the lower nutrient availability in rocky savanna soils, we only detected lower leaf phosphorus content in individuals from this habitat. Furthermore, individuals from both habitats had equally thick bark, suggesting that the fire-defense strategy is related to a stable, rather than plastic trait. Overall, our results highlight the central role of contrasting soil water availability patterns in driving phenotypic plasticity within species. We conclude that savanna species are responding to water and nutrient availabilities, via plasticity in traits related to the resource-retention strategy, and preparing for future fires, via uniformly thick bark. Wide plant distribution in contrasting habitats is possible for species that can shift ecological strategies to survive in nutrient- and water-limited habitats such as rocky savannas.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a competitive grant from CNPq to RGC (Rede Cerrado CNPq/PPBio, Project No. 457406/2012-7), two research grants to MVC (GENPAC: CNPq 563727/2010-1, FAPEG 563624/2010-8; and Universal/CNPq 476599/2012-1), and scholarships to CCS and LM from CAPES/MEC. RGC and MVC are continuously supported with a productivity grants from CNPq, which we gratefully acknowledge. We thank J.W. Veldman for his detailed review and helpful comments that helped to improve the manuscript.

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  1. Laboratório de Genética & Biodiversidade, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, GO, 74001-970, Brazil

    Cibele de Cássia-Silva & Rosane G. Collevatti

  2. Laboratório de Ecologia e Funcionamento de Comunidades, Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, GO, 74001-970, Brazil

    Cibele de Cássia-Silva, Marcus V. Cianciaruso & Leandro Maracahipes

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  1. Cibele de Cássia-Silva
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de Cássia-Silva, C., Cianciaruso, M.V., Maracahipes, L. et al. When the same is not the same: phenotypic variation reveals different plant ecological strategies within species occurring in distinct Neotropical savanna habitats. Plant Ecol 218, 1221–1231 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-017-0765-3

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