| Popis: |
Climate change is rapidly altering local temperature regimes and in different ways across the landscape. To cope with these rapid changes, plant species must have the capacity to respond to changes in temperature stress or risk extinction. We compared temperature tolerance traits in Solanum carolinense populations from Texas and Minnesota to understand how a species adapts to extreme temperature stress. We examined traits in both the gametophytic and sporophytic stages to differentiate between these distinct phases of selection and determine whether there is a correlation between the two. We found that temperature sensitivity differed between populations of the south that face extreme heat regularly and northern populations that do not. The results were not completely consistent with our expectations, including counter-gradient results in both the sporophyte and gametophyte. There were also no correlations in temperature tolerance between the two life-stages, suggesting that there are different temperature tolerance strategies in the gametophyte and sporophyte. Our results support the adaptation of a potential avoidance mechanism to mitigate extreme heat in the gametophyte. These findings indicate that wild populations have the potential to adapt to rising temperatures due to climate change in the future. |
