Phenotypic plasticity in response to temperature fluctuations is genetically variable, and relates to climatic variability of origin, in Arabidopsis thaliana

Abstract

Under current climate change, increasing mean temperatures are not only causing hotter summers, but temperature variability is increasing as well. Phenotypic plasticity can help plants to overcome negative effects of temperature variability and allow them to rapidly adjust traits to adverse conditions. Moreover, genetic variation in such plasticity could provide potential for adaptive evolution in response to changing climate variability. Here, we conducted an experiment with 11 Arabidopsis thaliana genotypes to investigate intraspecific variation in plant responses to two aspects of variable temperature stress: timing and frequency. We found that the timing but not frequency of temperature stress affected the phenology, growth, reproduction and allocation strategy of plants, and that genotypes differed substantially in their responses. Moreover, trait plasticity was positively related to precipitation variability of origin, suggesting an adaptive role of plasticity. Our results indicate that the developmental stage of a plant during heat stress is a key determinant of its response, and that plasticity to temperature variability is an evolving and possibly adaptive trait in natural populations of A. thaliana. More generally, our study demonstrates the usefulness of studying plant responses to climatic variability per se, given that climatic variability is predicted to increase in the future.

Plant genome size influences stress tolerance of invasive and native plants via plasticity

“…Increased plasticity may facilitate plant invasions if high fitness can be maintained across a wide range of abiotic conditions or if plasticity causes the plant to exploit resources more efficiently at one end of an environmental gradient (Richards et al 2006, Chun 2011, Davidson et al 2011). Trait plasticity is also thought to be critical for stress tolerance in plants because it can help plants mitigate the consequences of environmental variability via trait adjustment (reviewed in Scheepens et al 2018). We predicted that plasticity would be negatively correlated with genome size (see Knight et al 2005), but we found that these relationships were variable among plant traits and between the native and invasive P. australis lineages.…”

Species‐specific responses to combined water stress and increasing temperatures in two bee‐pollinated congeners (Echium, Boraginaceae)

“…Water and temperature stresses are particularly deleterious when they occur early during the reproductive phase and during the blooming period (Barnabás, Jäger, & Fehér, 2008;Scheepens, Deng, & Bossdorf, 2018). The number and size of flowers decrease under water and temperature stresses (Carroll, Pallardy, & Galen, 2001;Descamps, Quinet, & Baijot, 2018;Glenny, Runyon, & Burkle, 2018;Phillips et al, 2018;Takkis, Tscheulin, & Petanidou, 2018).…”

Exploring natural diversity of Medicago truncatula reveals physiotypes and loci associated with the response of seedling performance to nitrate supply

“…Only few works, on small number of genotypes, studied allocation of seed biomass between seedling organs during heterotrophic growth (Dürr and Mary 1998, Brunel et al 2009, Brunel‐Muguet et al 2015). Phenotypic plasticity can also provide relevant adaptive traits in response to climatic variability or management actions (Wu et al 2011, Yu et al 2014, Casadebaig et al 2015, Mašková and Herben 2018, Scheepens et al 2018).…”