Adaptation of Poa alpina to altitude and land use in the Swiss Alps

Abstract

Current land use and climate change are prompting questions about the ability of plants to adapt to such environmental change. Therefore, we experimentally addressed plant performance and quantitative-genetic diversity of the common Alpine Meadow Grass Poa alpina. We asked how land use and altitude affect the occurrence of P. alpina in the field and whether its common-garden performance suggests adaptation to conditions at plant origin and differences in quantitative genetic diversity among plant origins. Among 216 candidate grassland sites of different land use and altitude from 12 villages in the Swiss Alps, P. alpina occurred preferentially in fertilized and grazed sites and at higher elevations. In a common garden at 1,500 m asl, we grew two plants of [600 genotypes representing 78 grassland sites. After 2 years, nearly 90% of all plants had reproduced. In agreement with adaptive advantages of vegetative reproduction at higher altitudes, only 23% of reproductive plants from lower altitudes reproduced via vegetative bulbils, but 55% of plants from higher altitudes. In agreement with adaptive advantages of reproduction in grazed sites, allocation to reproductive biomass was higher in plants from grazed grasslands than from mown ones. For 53 grasslands, we also investigated broad-sense heritability H 2 , which was significant for all studied traits and twice as high for grazed as for mown grasslands. Moreover, possibly associated with their higher landscape diversity, H 2 was higher for sites of villages of Romanic cultural tradition than for those of Germanic and Walser traditions. We suggest promoting diverse land use regimes to conserve not only landscape and plant species diversity, but also adaptive genetic differentiation and heritable genetic variation.

Omnipresence of leaf herbivory by invertebrates and leaf infection by fungal pathogens in agriculturally used grasslands of the Swiss Alps, but low plant damage

“…In addition to land use, biodiversity is also affected by geological, topographic, and climatic conditions (Kikvidze et al 2011). In the Alps, the altitudinal gradient is particularly important (Rahbek 1995;Theurillat et al 2003;Sergio and Pedrini 2007;Stöcklin et al 2009;Fischer et al 2011). Clearly, comprehensive ecological understanding should be based on the knowledge of biodiversity at all levels and spatial scales (Fischer et al 2010).…”

High intraspecific phenotypic variation, but little evidence for local adaptation in Geum reptans populations in the Central Swiss Alps

“…Evidence for local adaptation has been found in a number of alpine plant populations (Gonzalo-Turpin and Hazard 2009;Fischer et al 2011;Giménez-Benavides et al 2011;Hamann et al 2016); however, an extensive meta-analysis and another recent study suggest that local adaptation may be less common than frequently assumed (Leimu and Fischer 2008;Hirst et al 2016). Extensive gene flow among populations has been recognized as a main hindrance for local adaptation (Kawecki and Ebert 2004).…”

The dynamics of the species into collections of the North American and the Himalayan hills in Alpinarium of Peter the Great Botanical Garden

“…В настоящее время, учитывая фиксируемый на планете фактор потепления климата (Dale et al, 2001;Aerts et al, 2004;Smith et al, 2009;Fischer et al, 2011;Griffin, Hoffmann, 2012;Richter et al, 2012;Фирсов, Волчанская, 2012;Фирсов и др., 2012Frei, et al, 2014), вероятно станет возможным повторное интродукционное испытание многих из тех редких и экзотических видов травянистых многолетников, которые 60 или 50 лет назад ни как не зимовали в открытом грунте в условиях Санкт-Петербурга в частности, но и на Северо-Западе России в целом. А так же нельзя исключить возможность новых попыток интродукционных испытаний более теплолюбивых видов растений в открытом грунте в коллекциях Сада.…”