Microclimate predicts frost-hardiness of alpine Arabidopsis thaliana populations better than elevation

In mountain regions, topological differences on the micro-scale can strongly affect microclimate and may counteract the average effects of elevation, such as decreasing temperatures. While these interactions are well understood, their effect on plant adaptation is understudied.

We investigated winter frost hardiness of Arabidopsis thaliana accessions originating from 13 sites along altitudinal gradients in the Southern Alps during three winters on an experimental field station on the Swabian Jura and compared levels of frost damage with the observed number of frost days and the lowest temperature in eight collection sites.

We found that frost-hardiness increased with elevation in a log-linear fashion. This is consistent with adaptation to a higher frequency of frost conditions, but also indicates a decreasing rate of change in frost hardiness with increasing elevation. Moreover, the number of frost days measured with temperature loggers at the collection sites correlated much better with frost-hardiness than the elevation of collection sites, suggesting that populations were adapted to their local microclimate. Notably, the variance in frost days across sites increased exponentially with elevation. Together, our results suggest that strong microclimate heterogeneity of high alpine environments can preserve functional genetic diversity among small populations.

Synthesis. Here we tested how plant populations differed in their adaptation to frost exposure along an elevation gradient and whether microsite temperatures improve the prediction of frost hardiness. We found that local temperatures, particularly the number of frost days, is a better predictor of the frost hardiness of plants than elevation. This reflects a substantial variance in frost frequency between sites at similar high elevations. We conclude that high mountain regions harbor microsites that differ in their local microclimate and thereby can preserve a high functional genetic diversity among them. Therefore, high mountain regions have the potential to function as a refugium in times of global change.