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- Title
Plant Evolution History Overwhelms Current Environment Gradients in Affecting Leaf Chlorophyll Across the Tibetan Plateau.
- Authors
Yicheng He; Tingting Li; Ruiyang Zhang; Jinsong Wang; Juntao Zhu; Yang Li; Xinli Chen; Junxiao Pan; Ying Shen; Furong Wang; Jingwen Li; Dashuan Tian
- Abstract
Aims: Leaf chlorophyll (Chl) is a fundamental component and good proxy for plant photosynthesis. However, we know little about the large-scale patterns of leaf Chl and the relative roles of current environment changes vs. plant evolution in driving leaf Chl variations. Locations: The east to west grassland transect of the Tibetan Plateau. Methods: We performed a grassland transect over 1,600km across the Tibetan Plateau, measuring leaf Chl among 677 site-species. Results: Leaf Chl showed a significantly spatial pattern across the grasslands in the Tibetan Plateau, decreasing with latitude but increasing with longitude. Along with environmental gradient, leaf Chl decreased with photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), but increasedwithwateravailability and soil nitrogen availability. Furthermore, leaf Chl also showed significant differences among functional groups (C4 > C3 species; legumes < non-legume species), but no difference between annual and perennial species. However, we surprisingly found that plant evolution played a dominant role in shaping leaf Chl variations when comparing the sum and individual effects of all the environmental factors above. Moreover, we revealed that leaf Chl non-linearly decreased with plant evolutionary divergence time. This well-matches the non-linearly increasing trend in PAR or decreasing trend in temperature during the geological time-scale uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. Main Conclusion: This study highlights the dominant role of plant evolution in determining leaf Chl variations across the Tibetan Plateau. Given the fundamental role of Chl for photosynthesis, these results provide new insights into reconsidering photosynthesis capacity in alpine plants and the carbon cycle in an evolutionary view.
- Subjects
TIBETAN Plateau; PLANT evolution; CHLOROPHYLL; PLATEAUS; CARBON cycle; MOUNTAIN plants; FUNCTIONAL groups; GRASSLAND soils; LEGUMES
- Publication
Frontiers in Plant Science, 2022, Vol 13, p1
- ISSN
1664-462X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3389/fpls.2022.941983