The susceptibility of white spruce, Piceaglauca (Moench) Voss, leaders to damage by the spruce bud moth, Zeirapheracanadensis Mut. & Free., was assessed for 72 half-sib families at four half-sib family test sites and in one seedling seed orchard in New Brunswick. Trees of intermediate height (1.5–3.75 m) were the most damaged, and damage in one year was positively correlated to damage in the next. During 2 consecutive years, half-sib family explained only 1% of the variation in damage when all four test sites were analysed together. However, half-sib family explained between 2.9 and 7.9% of the variation in damage at individual sites. At the four test sites, mean growth reductions of trees in the two most susceptible families were estimated to be approximately 30% higher than those of trees in the two least susceptible families. When all 72 families were ranked with respect to height, trees in the most susceptible and least susceptible families were ranked very poorly and highly, respectively. This suggested that trees in more susceptible families were smaller because of damage by the spruce bud moth. However, this pattern was observed at all sites, including one where bud moth damage was negligible. Thus even in the absence of damage by the spruce bud moth, trees in these least susceptible families had a greater growth rate, in terms of height, than trees in the most susceptible families. This indicates that selection for plant traits reducing susceptibility to bud moth may be compatible with breeding programs attempting to improve height growth. Implications of these results for tree improvement programs are discussed.

Seed mass is an adaptive trait affecting species distribution, population dynamics and community structure. In widely distributed species, variation in seed mass may reflect both genetic adaptation to local environments and adaptive phenotypic plasticity. Acknowledging the difficulty in separating these two aspects, we examined the causal relationships determining seed mass variation to better understand adaptability and/or plasticity of selected tree species to spatial/climatic variation. A total of 504, 481 and 454 seed collections of black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) B.S.P.), white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) and jack pine (Pinus banksiana Lamb) across the Canadian Boreal Forest, respectively, were selected. Correlation analyses were used to determine how seed mass vary with latitude, longitude, and altitude. Structural Equation Modeling was used to examine how geographic and climatic variables influence seed mass. Climatic factors explained a large portion of the variation in seed mass (34, 14 and 29%, for black spruce, white spruce and jack pine, respectively), indicating species-specific adaptation to long term climate conditions. Higher annual mean temperature and winter precipitation caused greater seed mass in black spruce, but annual precipitation was the controlling factor for white spruce. The combination of factors such as growing season temperature and evapotranspiration, temperature seasonality and annual precipitation together determined seed mass of jack pine. Overall, sites with higher winter temperatures were correlated with larger seeds. Thus, long-term climatic conditions, at least in part, determined spatial variation in seed mass. Black spruce and Jack pine, species with relatively more specific habitat requirements and less plasticity, had more variation in seed mass explained by climate than did the more plastic species white spruce. As traits such as seed mass are related to seedling growth and survival, they potentially influence forest species composition in a changing climate and should be included in future modeling of vegetation shifts.

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A commentary onChallenging Easter Island's collapse: the need for interdisciplinary synergies by Rull, V.,