[COLLOQUE] GENTREE Final Conference 27-31 January 2020 séance 10

GENTREE Final Conference : Natalia VIZCAINO PALOMAR - INRAE Bordeaux · France

GENTREE Final Conference 'Genetics to the rescue - managing forests sustainably in a changing environment'

27-31 January 2020, Avignon, France

http://www.gentree-h2020.eu/

Natalia VIZCAINO PALOMAR - INRAE Bordeaux · France : Local adaptation, phenotypic plasticity or both?

What happens if, in addition to study local adaptation in trees, wefocus our attention on the phenotypic plasticity them? Under rapidenvironmental change, phenotypic plasticity, if adaptive, couldincrease the odds for organisms to persist.

Environmental variationover time is an important source of phenotypic plasticity.

Likewise,phenotypic plasticity can vary with age in many organisms.

However,little is known on phenotypic plasticity variation across species’ranges.

Our aims are:

-(i) to assess whether populations’ phenotypicplasticity is related to the inter-annual climate variation underwhich populations have evolved during the last century;

-(ii) tocompare phenotypic plasticity among developmental classes;

-and (iii)to predict phenotypic plasticity across’ species ranges. We used372 646 individual tree height measurements at three developmentalclasses from a wide network of 38 common gardens in Europe and NorthAfrica with provenances covering the distribution range of thespecies.

With this data, we:

-i) build linear mixed-effect models oftree height as a function of tree age, population and climate;

-ii)estimate populations’ reaction norms from the fitted models;

-iii)calculate populations’ phenotypic plasticity indexes;

- iv) buildmodels of populations’ phenotypic plasticity indexes as a functionof inter-annual climate variation during the last century.

We foundthat

-i) most populations that have evolved under high inter-annualclimate variation, in either maximum or minimum values in temperatureor precipitation, exhibited high values of plasticity in tree height;

-ii) phenotypic plasticity for tree height was higher in young treesthan in older ones,

-iii) phenotypic plasticity did not follow anyparticular geographical pattern across species’ ranges.

Phenotypicplasticity across the three Mediterranean pines’ ranges is relatedwith the climate variation experienced over time and calls intoquestion whether this plasticity could be adaptive and hencebeneficial to cope with climate change in the short-term.