Climate and Developmental Plasticity: Interannual Variability in Grapevine Leaf Morphology

Abstract

The shapes of leaves are dynamic, changing over evolutionary time between species, within a single plant producing different shaped leaves at successive nodes, during the development of a single leaf as it allometrically expands, and in response to the environment. Notably, strong correlations between the dissection and size of leaves with temperature and precipitation exist in both the paleorecord and extant populations. Yet, a morphometric model integrating evolutionary, developmental, and environmental effects on leaf shape is lacking. Here, we continue a morphometric analysis of .5,500 leaves representing 270 grapevines of multiple Vitis species between two growing seasons. Leaves are paired one-to-one and vine-to-vine accounting for developmental context, between growing seasons. Linear discriminant analysis reveals shape features that specifically define growing season, regardless of species or developmental context. The shape feature, a more pronounced distal sinus, is associated with the colder, drier growing season, consistent with patterns observed in the paleorecord. We discuss the implications of such plasticity in a long-lived woody perennial, such as grapevine (Vitis spp.), with respect to the evolution and functionality of plant morphology and changes in climate.

Arabidopsis phenotyping through geometric morphometrics

“…In fact, the use of GM tools to analyze plant shape have already started, from a botanical, systematic, archaeological [32, 33, 35], and even experimental [58] point of view.…”

“…GM is now a mature discipline that has been widely applied in biology [28–30] (see [31] for a review). For example, barley seeds [32] and grapevine leaves [33] and oak leaves [34, 35] were studied using GM methods.…”

Rapid leaf trait response to growing-season meteorology inVitis:Implications for leaf physiognomic paleoclimate reconstructions

“…Angiosperm leaves exhibit a dramatic diversity of sizes and shapes. Leaf shape is dynamic and changes across many scales, from the evolutionary timescales that differentiate species (Bailey and Sinnott, 1915, 1916; Schmerler et al, 2012), to phenotypic plasticity during the lifetime of a single plant (Royer et al, 2008, 2009; Royer, 2012b; Chitwood et al, 2015, 2016; McKee et al, 2019), to heteroblasty as a plant grows (Gould, 1993), to the allometric changes in a single leaf as it develops (Nicotra et al, 2011). Leaf physiognomic paleoclimate proxies are based on two tacit assumptions: (1) that plants plastically respond to changes in climate and (2) that changes in leaf physiognomy scale through growth and development.…”

“…In addition to phenotypic plasticity, studies of leaf physiognomy must consider both allometric (differences in shape due to varying growth rates across an organ) and heteroblastic (differences in shape at successive nodes) influences on leaf shape (Chitwood et al, 2015, 2016). Leaf physiognomic paleoclimate proxies assume that leaf traits scale as a leaf matures (isometric change).…”

Morphological Plant Modeling: Unleashing Geometric and Topological Potential within the Plant Sciences

“…Yet, the embedding of developing plant morphologies into a threedimensional space imposes constraints on plant forms. Awareness of such constraints has led to new interpretations of plant morphology (Prusinkiewicz and de Reuille, 2010;Bucksch et al, 2014b) that might provide avenues to explain symmetry and asymmetry in plant organs (e.g., Martinez et al, 2016) or the occurrence of plasticity as a morphological response to environmental changes (e.g., Royer et al, 2009;Palacio-López et al, 2015;Chitwood et al, 2016).…”