Contrasting avoidance - tolerance in heat stress response from thermally contrasting climates in Arabidopsis thaliana

Abstract

Plants ameliorate heat stress by avoiding heat loading, reducing tissue temperature through evaporative cooling, and/or through tolerance, i.e. maintaining function at high temperature. Here Arabidopsis thaliana natural populations from two ends of an elevation gradient in NE Spain were used to ask: do plants from contrasting climates 1) show genetically based differences in heat stress damage and 2) adopt different avoidance-tolerance patterns? Four low-and four high-elevation populations were repeatedly exposed to high temperature (45{degrees}C) in a growth chamber at bolting stage. High temperature induced 23% more inflorescence branches, 25% longer total reproductive branch length, and 12% less root dry mass, compared with control. However summed fruit length, hence fitness, decreased by 15%, populations did not differ significantly in fitness reduction. High elevation populations showed more avoidance, i.e. lower rosette temperature at 45{degrees}C. Low elevation populations showed more tolerance, maintaining relatively higher photosynthetic rate at 45{degrees}C. Avoidance was associated with high transpiration rate and flat rosette leaf angle. Tolerance was negatively associated with heat shock protein 101 (Hsp101) and salicylic acid (SA) accumulation. The divergent avoidance-tolerance patterns for populations from thermally contrasting climates may indicate both constraints on the evolution and contrasting adaptive divergence regulated by local climates.