Leaf morphological traits show greater responses to recent changes in climate than leaf physiological traits and gas exchange variables

Susan E. Everingham, Catherine A. Offord, Manon E. B. Sabot, Angela T. Moles

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Adaptation to changing conditions is one of the strategies plants may use to survive in the face of climate change. We aimed to determine whether plants' leaf morpho- logical and physiological traits/gas exchange variables have changed in response to recent, anthropogenic climate change. We grew seedlings from resurrected historic seeds from ex-situ seed banks and paired modern seeds in a common- garden experiment. Species pairs were collected from regions that had undergone differing levels of climate change using an emerging framework—Climate Contrast Resurrection Ecology, allowing us to hypothesise that regions with greater changes in climate (including temperature, precipitation, climate variability and climatic extremes) would be greater trait responses in leaf morphology and physiology over time. Our study found that in regions where there were greater changes in climate, there were greater changes in average leaf area, leaf margin complexity, leaf thick- ness and leaf intrinsic water use efficiency. Changes in leaf roundness, photosynthetic rate, stomatal density and the leaf economic strategy of our species were not correlated with changes in climate. Our results show that leaves do have the ability to respond to changes in climate, however, there are greater inherited responses in morphological leaf traits than in physiological traits/variables and greater responses to extreme measures of climate than gradual changes in climatic means. It is vital for accurate predictions of species' responses to impending climate change to ensure that future climate change ecology studies utilise knowledge about the difference in both leaf trait and gas exchange responses and the climate variables that they respond to.
Original languageEnglish
Article numbere10941
Number of pages16
JournalEcology and Evolution
Volume14
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2024

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© 2024 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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