The distribution of ‘cold-adapted’ plant species is expected to undergo severe range loss in the near future. Species distributionmodels predicting species' future distribution often do not integrate species ability to respond to environmental factors throughgenetic traits or phenotypic plasticity. This especially applies to arctic-alpine species whose present-day range is strongly frag-mented because of the cyclic vicissitudes they experienced during the Ice Age. We cultivated plants from four European pop-ulations of the arctic-alpine species Viscaria alpina from different geographic provenances. Two of the populations were fromnorthern high-latitude regions in Scandinavia; the remaining two populations were from southern mid-latitude mountains.In both areas, one population was from a colder site and the other from a warmer site. We cultivated the plants in controlledthermal conditions with two treatments, one mimicking temperature conditions at the warmest site and the other adding 2 day-temperature peaks mimicking short-term heat waves. At the end of the experiment, we measured growth in length and mortalityof all plants along with a set of ecophysiological variables. We also assessed phylogeographic variation in the four populationsbased on plastid-DNA sequences. The plants from northern provenances grew more than those from the southern provenances.The plants of all populations performed overall well, in terms of growth rate and ecophysiology, under the heat spell, with theplants of the Swedish population exhibiting the highest phenotypic plasticity. Such a pattern was associated with the highest ge-netic variation in the Swedish population. Mortality of the plants cultivated under warm temperatures was overall low, but mor-tality strongly increased in the plants exposed to the heat spell. We conclude that plants of V. alpina populations from differentgeographic provenances are generally able to cope with scenarios resulting from global warming, but drought hampers resilienceto heat waves through increased mortality
Complex Responses to Climate Warming of Arctic‐Alpine Plant Populations From Different Geographic Provenance
Brancaleoni, Lisa;Gerdol, Renato
;Scramoncin, Lisa;
2025
Abstract
The distribution of ‘cold-adapted’ plant species is expected to undergo severe range loss in the near future. Species distributionmodels predicting species' future distribution often do not integrate species ability to respond to environmental factors throughgenetic traits or phenotypic plasticity. This especially applies to arctic-alpine species whose present-day range is strongly frag-mented because of the cyclic vicissitudes they experienced during the Ice Age. We cultivated plants from four European pop-ulations of the arctic-alpine species Viscaria alpina from different geographic provenances. Two of the populations were fromnorthern high-latitude regions in Scandinavia; the remaining two populations were from southern mid-latitude mountains.In both areas, one population was from a colder site and the other from a warmer site. We cultivated the plants in controlledthermal conditions with two treatments, one mimicking temperature conditions at the warmest site and the other adding 2 day-temperature peaks mimicking short-term heat waves. At the end of the experiment, we measured growth in length and mortalityof all plants along with a set of ecophysiological variables. We also assessed phylogeographic variation in the four populationsbased on plastid-DNA sequences. The plants from northern provenances grew more than those from the southern provenances.The plants of all populations performed overall well, in terms of growth rate and ecophysiology, under the heat spell, with theplants of the Swedish population exhibiting the highest phenotypic plasticity. Such a pattern was associated with the highest ge-netic variation in the Swedish population. Mortality of the plants cultivated under warm temperatures was overall low, but mor-tality strongly increased in the plants exposed to the heat spell. We conclude that plants of V. alpina populations from differentgeographic provenances are generally able to cope with scenarios resulting from global warming, but drought hampers resilienceto heat waves through increased mortalityI documenti in SFERA sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
