RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Trait plasticity and covariance along a continuous soil moisture gradient
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.02.17.952853
DO 10.1101/2020.02.17.952853
A1 J. Grey Monroe
A1 Haoran Cai
A1 David L. Des Marais
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/01/17/2020.02.17.952853.abstract
AB Water availability is perhaps the greatest environmental determinant of plant yield and fitness. However, our understanding of plant-water relations is limited because it is primarily informed by experiments considering soil moisture variability at two discrete levels – wet and dry – rather than as a continuously varying environmental gradient. Here we used experimental and statistical methods based on function-valued traits to explore responses to a continuous soil moisture gradient in physiological and morphological traits in two species and five genotypes each of the model grass Brachypodium. We find that most traits exhibit non-linear responses to soil moisture variability. We also observe differences in the shape of these non-linear responses between traits, species, and genotypes. Emergent phenomena arise from this variation including changes in trait correlations and evolutionary constraints as a function of soil moisture. These results point to the importance of considering non-linearity in plant-water relations to understand plastic and evolutionary responses to changing climates.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.