Waiting for the snow to melt…
As environments change, natural selection will increasingly favor plasticity, a mechanism by which organisms express variable phenotypes based on their abiotic or biotic environment. While these trends occur in sweeping macroenvironmental or coarse-grain patterns, this variation can also exist on an extremely fine-grain scale. By analyzing foliar plant traits in a reciprocal transplant experiment, we aimed to identify how the spatial scale of environmental variation drives patterns of plasticity. In this study, we asked if a native mustard (Boechera stricta) expressed phenotypic plasticity in response to abiotic and biotic variation at two spatial scales: the macro- and microenvironment. By investigating these questions, we made predictions about how environmental heterogeneity influences plant responses to natural climatic variation. We found that plant traits are determined by genetics, macro- and microenvironment (spatial scale), and the interaction between genotype and environment. Spatial scale of environmental heterogeneity affects plasticity of some foliar traits (e.g., specific leaf area) and life history traits (e.g., flowering phenology) through both abiotic and biotic factors. These fine scale differences in environmental factors such as soil moisture, species richness, and plant diversity can drive patterns of plasticity, and suggest a need for a more in depth environmental understanding of genotype by environment interactions. Our research suggests that environment plays a complex role in determining adaptation in plant populations through both ecological and evolutionary means. In further studies of plasticity, it is paramount to define both spatial scale as well as the abiotic and biotic heterogeneity of the ecosystem in order to best understand what controls patterns of plasticity.
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