Pre-adaptation to climate change through topography-driven evolution of traits and their plasticity

1. Climate change will increase the level of drought stress experienced by plant communities, but the spatial distribution of projected changes in dryness remains highly uncertain. Species can, to some extent, deal with climate uncertainty through natural variation in adaptive responses to environmental heterogeneity and predictability. Biodiversity conservation could thus target populations pre-adapted to climatic heterogeneity to anticipate climate uncertainty. Disentangling evolution of trait means vs. trait plasticity, however, requires a sampling design with genetic replicates grown under distinct environmental conditions.
2. Here, we applied three soil moisture treatments to genetic replicates of Fragaria vesca plants raised from seeds that were sampled in distinct topographical settings, to study adaptive trait and plasticity divergence in response to drought.
3. We demonstrate that various plant traits evolved along distinct topographical gradients. For example, populations on s...