Relationships between soil and leaf mineral composition are element‐specific, environment‐dependent and geographically structured in the emerging model Arabidopsis halleri

Abstract

Summary Leaf mineral composition, the leaf ionome, reflects the complex interaction between a plant and its environment including local soil composition, an influential factor that can limit species distribution and plant productivity. Here we addressed within‐species variation in plant–soil interactions and edaphic adaptation using Arabidopsis halleri, a well‐suited model species as a facultative metallophyte and metal hyperaccumulator.We conducted multi‐element analysis of 1972 paired leaf and soil samples from 165 European populations of A. halleri, at individual resolution to accommodate soil heterogeneity. Results were further confirmed under standardized conditions upon cultivation of 105 field‐collected genotypes on an artificially metal‐contaminated soil in growth chamber experiments.Soil‐independent between‐ and within‐population variation set apart leaf accumulation of zinc, cadmium and lead from all other nutrient and nonessential elements, concurring with differential hypothesized ecological roles in either biotic interaction or nutrition. For these metals, soil–leaf relationships were element‐specific, differed between metalliferous and nonmetalliferous soils and were geographically structured both in the field and under standardized growth conditions, implicating complex scenarios of recent ecological adaptation.Our study provides an example and a reference for future related work and will serve as a basis for the molecular–genetic dissection and ecological analysis of the observed phenotypic variation.

Photosynthetic Efficiency as Bioindicator of Environmental Pressure in A. halleri

“…Differences in Cd concentrations in shoots between the results presented in this study and those obtained by Stein et al (2017) may be caused by the time of sampling (October for Stein et al [2017] and August for the data presented here) or the weather conditions in the year of sampling.…”

“…On the other hand, in this study, all of the individual plants from the M populations accumulated Cd in the shoots above 100 mg kg 21 dry weight. By contrast, Stein et al (2017) showed that a large number Presented data are means 6 SE (n = 8, except for C, where n = 6). Means followed by the same letter in a row are not significantly different from each other using the LSD test (P # 0.05).…”

“…3). Stein et al (2017) found that the hyperaccumulation of Cd is not observed in most of the NM populations that grow on soils with a natural concentration of both metals. Two NM populations (C and R) that were investigated in this study accumulated low amounts of Cd in their shoots (Table II); thus, hyperaccumulation also was not detected in these plants.…”

“…The allelic richness of populations from the western Carpathians compared with that in Upper Silesia was confirmed by Wasowicz et al (2016), which suggests that the populations from the Tatra Mountains may have been the origin of the populations that are located in Upper Silesia. Furthermore, Stein et al (2017) recently showed that there is a high degree of variation in the accumulation of different elements, including Cd and Zn, in the populations of A. halleri from different locations. Hence, the data presented above suggest that the origin of the NM and M populations may have an impact on the results of comparative research on the hyperaccumulation of HM or other physiological processes in A. halleri.…”

“…A. halleri and N. caerulescens) was the major goal of the studies conducted on these species in situ (Bert et al, 2000(Bert et al, , 2002Dahmani-Muller et al, 2000;Assunção et al, 2003;Pauwels et al, 2006;Stein et al, 2017). On the other hand, there are no reports describing other physiological processes (e.g.…”