Plant traits measured for Australian alpine plants

Rapid evolution is likely to be an important mechanism allowing native species to adapt to changed environmental conditions. Many northern hemisphere species have undergone substantial recent changes in phenology and morphology. However, we have little information about how native species in the southern hemisphere are responding to climate change. We used herbarium specimens from 21 native alpine plant species in Kosciuszko National Park, Australia to make over 1500 measurements of plant size, leaf thickness, leaf mass per area, leaf shape and leaf size across the last 126 years. Only two out of 21 species (9%) showed significant changes in any of the measured traits. The number of changes we observed was not significantly different to what we would expect by chance alone, based on the number of analyses performed. This lack of change is not attributable to methodology – an earlier study using the same methods found significant changes in 70% of species introduced to south-east Austral...