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Peer reviewed: True, Funder: University of Cambridge; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000735, While droughts, intensified by climate change, have been affecting forests worldwide, pest epidemics are a major source of uncertainty for assessing drought impacts on forest trees. Thus far, little information has documented the adaptability and evolvability of traits related to drought and pests simultaneously. We conducted common-garden experiments to investigate how several phenotypic traits (i.e. height growth, drought avoidance based on water-use efficiency inferred from δ13C and pest resistance based on defence traits) interact in five mature lodgepole pine populations established in four progeny trials in western Canada. The relevance of interpopulation variation in climate sensitivity highlighted that seed-source warm populations had greater adaptive capability than cold populations. In test sites, warming generated taller trees with higher δ13C and increased the evolutionary potential of height growth and δ13C across populations. We found, however, no pronounced gradient in defences and their evolutionary potential along populations or test sites. Response to selection was weak in defences across test sites, but high for height growth particularly at warm test sites. Response to the selection of δ13C varied depending on its selective strength relative to height growth. We conclude that warming could promote the adaptability and evolvability of growth response and drought avoidance with a limited evolutionary influence from pest (biotic) pressures.

Additional file 1.

While droughts, intensified by climate change, have been affecting forests worldwide, pest epidemics are a major source of uncertainty for assessing drought impacts on forest trees. Thus far, little information has documented the adaptability and evolvability of traits related to drought and pests simultaneously. We conducted common-garden experiments to investigate how several phenotypic traits (i.e. height growth, drought avoidance based on water-use efficiency inferred from δ13C and pest resistance based on defense traits) interact in five mature lodgepole pine populations established in four progeny trials in western Canada. The relevance of interpopulation variation in climate sensitivity highlighted that seed-source warm populations had greater adaptive capability than cold populations. In test sites, warming generated taller trees with higher δ13C and increased the evolutionary potential of height growth and δ13C across populations. We found, however, no pronounced gradient in defenses and their evolutionary potential along populations or test sites. Response to selection was weak in defenses across test sites, but high for height growth particularly at warm test sites. Response to the selection of δ13C varied depending on its selective strength relative to height growth. We conclude that warming could promote the adaptability and evolvability of growth response and drought avoidance with a limited evolutionary influence from pest (biotic) pressures.

14 páginas.- 4 figuras.- 1 tabla.- 101 referencias.- Supplementary material is available online at Evolution (https://academic.oup.com/evolut/qpad004) . A correction has been published: Evolution, Volume 77, Issue 4, 1 April 2023, Page 1174, https://doi.org/10.1093/evolut/qpad030 Issue Section: Correction This is a correction to: Yang Liu, Nadir Erbilgin, Eduardo Pablo Cappa, Charles Chen, Blaise Ratcliffe, Xiaojing Wei, Jennifer G Klutsch, Aziz Ullah, Jaime Sebastian Azcona, Barb R Thomas, Yousry A El-Kassaby, Decoupling of height growth and drought or pest resistance tradeoffs is revealed through multiple common-garden experiments of lodgepole pine, Evolution, 2023; qpad004, https://doi.org/10.1093/evolut/qpad004 In the originally published version of this manuscript, the images for Figures 3 and 4 were erroneously transposed. The images are now in their correct position to align with their respective legends. The Funding section was erroneously removed, and its details situated at the end of the Acknowledgements section. Funding details are now situated within the replaced Funding section. The publisher would like to apologise for the errors introduced here. The errors have been corrected in the article online., The environment could alter growth and resistance tradeoffs in plants by affecting the ratio of resource allocation to various competing traits. Yet, how and why functional tradeoffs change over time and space is poorly understood particularly in long-lived conifer species. By establishing four common-garden test sites for five lodgepole pine populations in western Canada, combined with genomic sequencing, we revealed the decoupling pattern and genetic underpinnings of tradeoffs between height growth, drought resistance based on δ13C and dendrochronology, and metrics of pest resistance based on pest suitability ratings. Height and δ13C correlation displayed a gradient change in magnitude and/or direction along warm-to-cold test sites. All cold test sites across populations showed a positive height and δ13C relationship. However, we did not observe such a clinal correlation pattern between height or δ13C and pest suitability. Further, we found that the study populations exhibiting functional tradeoffs or synergies to various degrees in test sites were driven by non-adaptive evolutionary processes rather than adaptive evolution or plasticity. Finally, we found positive genetic relationships between height and drought or pest resistance metrics and probed five loci showing potential genetic tradeoffs between northernmost and the other populations. Our findings have implications for deciphering the ecological, evolutionary, and genetic bases of the decoupling of functional tradeoffs due to environmental change., This work was funded by Genome Canada, Genome Alberta through Alberta Economic Trade and evelopment, Genome British Columbia, the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary, the University of Cambridge, and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture (CE200100015).