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Plant hydraulic traits reveal islands as refugia from worsening drought

Relatively mesic environments within arid regions may be important conservation targets as ‘climate change refugia’ for species persistence in the face of worsening drought conditions. Semi-arid southern California and the relatively mesic environments of California’s Channel Islands provide a model...

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Autores principales: Ramirez, Aaron R, De Guzman, Mark E, Dawson, Todd E, Ackerly, David D
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6988607/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32015878
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/conphys/coz115
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author Ramirez, Aaron R
De Guzman, Mark E
Dawson, Todd E
Ackerly, David D
author_facet Ramirez, Aaron R
De Guzman, Mark E
Dawson, Todd E
Ackerly, David D
author_sort Ramirez, Aaron R
collection PubMed
description Relatively mesic environments within arid regions may be important conservation targets as ‘climate change refugia’ for species persistence in the face of worsening drought conditions. Semi-arid southern California and the relatively mesic environments of California’s Channel Islands provide a model system for examining drought responses of plants in potential climate change refugia. Most methods for detecting refugia are focused on ‘exposure’ of organisms to certain abiotic conditions, which fail to assess how local adaptation or acclimation of plant traits (i.e. ‘sensitivity’) contribute to or offset the benefits of reduced exposure. Here, we use a comparative plant hydraulics approach to characterize the vulnerability of plants to drought, providing a framework for identifying the locations and trait patterns that underlie functioning climate change refugia. Seasonal water relations, xylem hydraulic traits and remotely sensed vegetation indices of matched island and mainland field sites were used to compare the response of native plants from contrasting island and mainland sites to hotter droughts in the early 21st century. Island plants experienced more favorable water relations and resilience to recent drought. However, island plants displayed low plasticity/adaptation of hydraulic traits to local conditions, which indicates that relatively conserved traits of island plants underlie greater hydraulic safety and localized buffering from regional drought conditions. Our results provide an explanation for how California’s Channel Islands function as a regional climate refugia during past and current climate change and demonstrate a physiology-based approach for detecting potential climate change refugia in other systems.
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spelling pubmed-69886072020-02-03 Plant hydraulic traits reveal islands as refugia from worsening drought Ramirez, Aaron R De Guzman, Mark E Dawson, Todd E Ackerly, David D Conserv Physiol Research Article Relatively mesic environments within arid regions may be important conservation targets as ‘climate change refugia’ for species persistence in the face of worsening drought conditions. Semi-arid southern California and the relatively mesic environments of California’s Channel Islands provide a model system for examining drought responses of plants in potential climate change refugia. Most methods for detecting refugia are focused on ‘exposure’ of organisms to certain abiotic conditions, which fail to assess how local adaptation or acclimation of plant traits (i.e. ‘sensitivity’) contribute to or offset the benefits of reduced exposure. Here, we use a comparative plant hydraulics approach to characterize the vulnerability of plants to drought, providing a framework for identifying the locations and trait patterns that underlie functioning climate change refugia. Seasonal water relations, xylem hydraulic traits and remotely sensed vegetation indices of matched island and mainland field sites were used to compare the response of native plants from contrasting island and mainland sites to hotter droughts in the early 21st century. Island plants experienced more favorable water relations and resilience to recent drought. However, island plants displayed low plasticity/adaptation of hydraulic traits to local conditions, which indicates that relatively conserved traits of island plants underlie greater hydraulic safety and localized buffering from regional drought conditions. Our results provide an explanation for how California’s Channel Islands function as a regional climate refugia during past and current climate change and demonstrate a physiology-based approach for detecting potential climate change refugia in other systems. Oxford University Press 2020-01-29 /pmc/articles/PMC6988607/ /pubmed/32015878 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/conphys/coz115 Text en © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for Experimental Biology. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Ramirez, Aaron R
De Guzman, Mark E
Dawson, Todd E
Ackerly, David D
Plant hydraulic traits reveal islands as refugia from worsening drought
title Plant hydraulic traits reveal islands as refugia from worsening drought
title_full Plant hydraulic traits reveal islands as refugia from worsening drought
title_fullStr Plant hydraulic traits reveal islands as refugia from worsening drought
title_full_unstemmed Plant hydraulic traits reveal islands as refugia from worsening drought
title_short Plant hydraulic traits reveal islands as refugia from worsening drought
title_sort plant hydraulic traits reveal islands as refugia from worsening drought
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6988607/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32015878
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/conphys/coz115
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