TY - JOUR
T1 - Chemical Similarity of Co-occurring Trees Decreases With Precipitation and Temperature in North American Forests
AU - Sedio, Brian E.
AU - Spasojevic, Marko J.
AU - Myers, Jonathan A.
AU - Wright, S. Joseph
AU - Person, Maria D.
AU - Chandrasekaran, Hamssika
AU - Dwenger, Jack H.
AU - Prechi, María Laura
AU - López, Christian A.
AU - Allen, David N.
AU - Anderson-Teixeira, Kristina J.
AU - Baltzer, Jennifer L.
AU - Bourg, Norman A.
AU - Castillo, Buck T.
AU - Day, Nicola J.
AU - Dewald-Wang, Emily
AU - Dick, Christopher W.
AU - James, Timothy Y.
AU - Kueneman, Jordan G.
AU - LaManna, Joseph
AU - Lutz, James A.
AU - McGregor, Ian R.
AU - McMahon, Sean M.
AU - Parker, Geoffrey G.
AU - Parker, John D.
AU - Vandermeer, John H.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank P. Dorrestein, E. A. Herre, J.-P. Salminen, V. Swamy, A. Tripathi, and M. Volf for helpful discussion and D. Espinoza, K. Greig, L. Hart, F. MacNeill, and K. Richardson for assistance in the laboratory; MiAmbiente Ministry of the Environment of the Republic of Panama for supporting the broader research endeavor of which this study is a part; the Texas Advanced Computing Center for assistance and support of high-performance computing for metabolomics; C. Catano, R. Swing, and D. Vela Díaz for assistance with trait sampling at Wind River and SERC, and Erika Gonzalez-Akre for assistance with leaf sampling at SCBI. We thank Scotty Creek Research Station, which provided accommodations during fieldwork. and the Government of the Northwest Territories—Wilfrid Laurier University partnership, which provided logistical support for fieldwork. We are grateful to the Dehcho First Nations for permission to conduct research on their lands (Aurora Research Institute license numbers 15413 and 16431).
Funding Information:
This work was supported by a Corteva Agrisciences grant to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and by the University of Texas at Austin. The Wind River Forest Dynamics Plot is a collaborative project of Utah State University and the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station. Funding was provided by the Smithsonian ForestGEO, Utah State University, the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, and the National Science Foundation. We acknowledge the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and the Forest Service Wind River Field Station for providing logistical support, and the students, volunteers and staff individually listed at http://wfdp. org for data collection. The Utah Forest Dynamics Plot is a collaborative project of Utah State University and the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station. Funding was provided by Utah State University, the Ecology Center at Utah State University, and the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station. We thank Cedar Breaks National Monument for providing logistical support, and the students, volunteers and staff individually listed at http://ufdp.org for data collection. The plot census at the Michigan Big Woods Forest Dynamics Plot was supported by a USDA McIntire-Stennis Grant and the Edwin S. George Reserve Fund at the University of Michigan. Funding for the Tyson Research Center Plot was provided by the International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability (I-CARES) at Washington University in St. Louis, the National Science Foundation (DEB 1557094 to JAM and MJS), the Smithsonian ForestGEO, and Tyson Research Center. We thank the Tyson Research Center staff for providing logistical support, and the more than 100 high school students, undergraduate students, and researchers that have contributed to the project. Funding for trait-data collection at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Tyson Research Center, and Wind River was provided by a ForestGEO Research Grants Program award to MJS and JAM. Funding for chemical-ecology research at Tyson Research Center was provided by a Washington University Environmental Studies Grant for Student Research awarded to ED-W. Funding for the Scotty Creek Forest Dynamics Plot was provided to JLB by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grants program, Global Water Futures project Northern Water Futures, Canada Foundation for Innovation, Canada Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, the Northern Student Training Program (support for field assistants), and the Smithsonian ForestGEO program. Funding for the SCBI ForestGEO plot was provided by ForestGEO, the Smithsonian Institution, and the HSBC Climate Partnership.
Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright © 2021 Sedio, Spasojevic, Myers, Wright, Person, Chandrasekaran, Dwenger, Prechi, López, Allen, Anderson-Teixeira, Baltzer, Bourg, Castillo, Day, Dewald-Wang, Dick, James, Kueneman, LaManna, Lutz, McGregor, McMahon, Parker, Parker and Vandermeer.
PY - 2021/5/26
Y1 - 2021/5/26
N2 - Plant diversity varies immensely over large-scale gradients in temperature, precipitation, and seasonality at global and regional scales. This relationship may be driven in part by climatic variation in the relative importance of abiotic and biotic interactions to the diversity and composition of plant communities. In particular, biotic interactions may become stronger and more host specific with increasing precipitation and temperature, resulting in greater plant species richness in wetter and warmer environments. This hypothesis predicts that the many defensive compounds found in plants’ metabolomes should increase in richness and decrease in interspecific similarity with precipitation, temperature, and plant diversity. To test this prediction, we compared patterns of chemical and morphological trait diversity of 140 woody plant species among seven temperate forests in North America representing 16.2°C variation in mean annual temperature (MAT), 2,115 mm variation in mean annual precipitation (MAP), and from 10 to 68 co-occurring species. We used untargeted metabolomics methods based on data generated with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry to identify, classify, and compare 13,480 unique foliar metabolites and to quantify the metabolomic similarity of species in each community with respect to the whole metabolome and each of five broad classes of metabolites. In addition, we compiled morphological trait data from existing databases and field surveys for three commonly measured traits (specific leaf area [SLA], wood density, and seed mass) for comparison with foliar metabolomes. We found that chemical defense strategies and growth and allocation strategies reflected by these traits largely represented orthogonal axes of variation. In addition, functional dispersion of SLA increased with MAP, whereas functional richness of wood density and seed mass increased with MAT. In contrast, chemical similarity of co-occurring species decreased with both MAT and MAP, and metabolite richness increased with MAT. Variation in metabolite richness among communities was positively correlated with species richness, but variation in mean chemical similarity was not. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that plant metabolomes play a more important role in community assembly in wetter and warmer climates, even at temperate latitudes, and suggest that metabolomic traits can provide unique insight to studies of trait-based community assembly.
AB - Plant diversity varies immensely over large-scale gradients in temperature, precipitation, and seasonality at global and regional scales. This relationship may be driven in part by climatic variation in the relative importance of abiotic and biotic interactions to the diversity and composition of plant communities. In particular, biotic interactions may become stronger and more host specific with increasing precipitation and temperature, resulting in greater plant species richness in wetter and warmer environments. This hypothesis predicts that the many defensive compounds found in plants’ metabolomes should increase in richness and decrease in interspecific similarity with precipitation, temperature, and plant diversity. To test this prediction, we compared patterns of chemical and morphological trait diversity of 140 woody plant species among seven temperate forests in North America representing 16.2°C variation in mean annual temperature (MAT), 2,115 mm variation in mean annual precipitation (MAP), and from 10 to 68 co-occurring species. We used untargeted metabolomics methods based on data generated with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry to identify, classify, and compare 13,480 unique foliar metabolites and to quantify the metabolomic similarity of species in each community with respect to the whole metabolome and each of five broad classes of metabolites. In addition, we compiled morphological trait data from existing databases and field surveys for three commonly measured traits (specific leaf area [SLA], wood density, and seed mass) for comparison with foliar metabolomes. We found that chemical defense strategies and growth and allocation strategies reflected by these traits largely represented orthogonal axes of variation. In addition, functional dispersion of SLA increased with MAP, whereas functional richness of wood density and seed mass increased with MAT. In contrast, chemical similarity of co-occurring species decreased with both MAT and MAP, and metabolite richness increased with MAT. Variation in metabolite richness among communities was positively correlated with species richness, but variation in mean chemical similarity was not. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that plant metabolomes play a more important role in community assembly in wetter and warmer climates, even at temperate latitudes, and suggest that metabolomic traits can provide unique insight to studies of trait-based community assembly.
KW - biotic interactions
KW - chemical ecology
KW - climate
KW - ForestGEO
KW - functional traits
KW - metabolomics
KW - species diversity gradient
KW - temperate forest
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107540106&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fevo.2021.679638
DO - 10.3389/fevo.2021.679638
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85107540106
SN - 2296-701X
VL - 9
JO - Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
JF - Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
M1 - 679638
ER -