ArticleAnnals of botany2012
Phenotypic plasticity as an index of drought tolerance in three Patagonian steppe grasses.
Article in Annals of botany, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effects of Climate and Water Limitation on Reproductive Traits and Trait Divergence Across Soil Boundaries in a Serpentine-Tolerant Annual Herb.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Abiotic and biotic controls of non-native perennial plant success in drylands.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Species habitat preferences and root trait variation across 65 temperate perennial forbs.Annals of botany · 2025Article
- A novel method for irrigating plants, tracking water use, and imposing water deficits in controlled environments.Frontiers in plant science · 2023Article
- Acclimation to water stress improves tolerance to heat and freezing in a common alpine grass.Oecologia · 2022Article
- Drought affects the coordination of belowground and aboveground resource-related traits inEcology and evolution · 2019Article
- Leaf structural and hydraulic adjustment with respect to air humidity and canopy position in silver birch (Betula pendula).Journal of plant research · 2019Article
- Phenotypic plasticity of four Chenopodiaceae species with contrasting saline-sodic tolerance in response to increased salinity-sodicity.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- De novo transcriptomic profiling of the clonal Leymus chinensis response to long-term overgrazing-induced memory.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Engineering Drought Resistance in Forest Trees.Frontiers in plant science · 2018Review
- Integration of transcriptomic and metabolic data reveals hub transcription factors involved in drought stress response in sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.).Plant molecular biology · 2017Article
- Long-Term Overgrazing-Induced Memory Decreases Photosynthesis of Clonal Offspring in a Perennial Grassland Plant.Frontiers in plant science · 2017Article
- Breeding system diversification and evolution in American Poa supersect. Homalopoa (Poaceae: Poeae: Poinae).Annals of botany · 2016Article
- Drought responses of three closely related Caragana species: implication for their vicarious distribution.Ecology and evolution · 2016Article
- Meaningful traits for grouping plant species across arid ecosystems.Journal of plant research · 2016Article
- Article
- Drought tolerance and plasticity in the invasive knapweed Centaurea stoebe s.l. (Asteraceae): effect of populations stronger than those of cytotype and range.Annals of botany · 2014Article
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2 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsDespite general agreement regarding the adaptive importance of plasticity, evidence for the role of environmental resource availability in plants is scarce. In arid and semi-arid environments, the persistence and dominance of perennial species depends on their capacity to tolerate drought: tolerance could be given on one extreme by fixed traits and, on the other, by plastic traits. To understand drought tolerance of species it is necessary to know the plasticity of their water economy-related traits, i.e. the position in the fixed-plastic continuum.
methodsThree conspicuous co-existing perennial grasses from a Patagonian steppe were grown under controlled conditions with four levels of steady-state water availability. Evaluated traits were divided into two groups. The first was associated with potential plant performance and correlated with fitness, and included above-ground biomass, total biomass, tillering and tiller density at harvest. The second group consisted of traits associated with mechanisms of plant adjustment to environmental changes and included root biomass, shoot/root ratio, tiller biomass, length of total elongated leaf, length of yellow tissue divided by time and final length divided by the time taken to reach final length. KEY RESULTS AND
conclusionsThe most plastic species along this drought gradient was the most sensitive to drought, whereas the least plastic and slowest growing was the most tolerant. This negative relationship between tolerance and plasticity was true for fitness-related traits but was trait-dependent for underlying traits. Remarkably, the most tolerant species had the highest positive plasticity (i.e. opposite to the default response to stress) in an underlying trait, directly explaining its drought resistance: it increased absolute root biomass. The niche differentiation axis that allows the coexistence of species in this group of perennial dryland grasses, all limited by soil surface moisture, would be a functional one of fixed versus plastic responses.
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