Insights into the relationships between morphological traits of Larrea divaricata and climate variables in southern South America

BARBARA, VENTO; JUAN, RIVERA; ONTIVEROS, MARCELA; EDUARDO MARTINEZ CARRETERO

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PLANT SCIENCES

UNIV CHICAGO PRESS

Lugar: Chicago; Año: 2022

1058-5893

How vegetation adapts toenvironmental changes is one of the most important questions in plant science.Temperature and precipitation are considered the main climatic drivers ofmorphological variations in vegetation. Severalstudies demonstrated that leaf morphology variesreliably with increasing latitude, and this is mostly attributed to changes in temperature andprecipitation patterns. Morphological responses of plants to temperature andrainfall regimes in arid lands are still scarcely known and understood. We analyze the morphological variationin leaf traits (size and shape) as also the internode distance of the species Larrea divaricata and its relationshipwith bioclimatic variables along a latitudinal gradient in the central-westernArgentina. We combined a set of morphologicalfeatures and bioclimatic indices using multivariate statistics and detected sixrelevant regions with clear differences both in the plant morphology andclimatic variables. The largest foliar areas werelocated in sites with higher seasonality precipitation. The leaf shape wasinfluenced by temperatures and the internode distances were larger undersemi-humid conditions.Plant traits in L. divaricata were influenced by the latitudinal gradient and the predominant climate conditions in each recognized region. The study of foliar morphology allowed us to identifyenvironmental factors that potentially influenced morphological responses inthe studied species. Our contribution attempts to recognize woody plant adaptationsdue to climate influence as a preliminary stage in our research. Otherenvironmental variables must be included in future works for a more completeanalysis.