Evolution of drought and frost responses in cool season grasses (Pooideae): was drought tolerance a precursor to frost tolerance?

Frost tolerance has evolved many times independently across flowering plants. However, conservation of several frost tolerance mechanisms among distant relatives suggests that apparently independent entries into freezing climates may have been facilitated by repeated modification of existing traits...

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Published inJournal of experimental botany Vol. 75; no. 20; pp. 6405 - 6422
Main Authors Stolsmo, Sylvia Pal, Lindberg, Camilla Lorange, Ween, Rebekka Eriksen, Schat, Laura, Preston, Jill Christine, Humphreys, Aelys Muriel, Fjellheim, Siri
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Oxford University Press 30.10.2024
Subjects
Research Papers
leaf dry matter content
Poaceae
drought tolerance
phylogeny
Pooideae
ancestral states
ecophysiology
electrolyte leakage
precursor trait
frost tolerance
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Summary:Frost tolerance has evolved many times independently across flowering plants. However, conservation of several frost tolerance mechanisms among distant relatives suggests that apparently independent entries into freezing climates may have been facilitated by repeated modification of existing traits ('precursor traits'). One possible precursor trait for freezing tolerance is drought tolerance, because palaeoclimatic data suggest plants were exposed to drought before frost and several studies have demonstrated shared physiological and genetic responses to drought and frost stress. Here, we combine ecophysiological experiments and comparative analyses to test the hypothesis that drought tolerance acted as a precursor to frost tolerance in cool-season grasses (Pooideae). Contrary to our predictions, we measured the highest levels of frost tolerance in species with the lowest ancestral drought tolerance, suggesting that the two stress responses evolved independently in different lineages. We further show that drought tolerance is more evolutionarily labile than frost tolerance. This could limit our ability to reconstruct the order in which drought and frost responses evolved relative to each other. Further research is needed to determine whether our results are unique to Pooideae or general for flowering plants.
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ISSN:0022-0957
1460-2431
1460-2431
DOI:10.1093/jxb/erae316