Adaptation to climate in widespread eucalypt species Final Report Margaret Byrne, Suzanne Prober, Liz McLean, Dorothy Steane, William Stock, Brad Potts and Rene Vaillancourt Adaptation to climate in widespread eucalypt species Climate-resilient revegetation of multi-use landscapes: Exploiting genetic variability in widespread species AUTHORS Margaret Byrne – Department of Environment and Conservation Suzanne Prober – CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences Liz McLean – Department of Environment and Conservation Dorothy Steane – University of Tasmania William Stock – Edith Cowan University Brad Potts – University of Tasmania Rene Vaillancourt – University of Tasmania Published by the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility ISBN: 978-1-921609-98-5 NCCARF Publication 27/13 © 2013 The State of Western Australia This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the copyright holder. Please cite this report as: Byrne, M, Prober, SM, McLean, EH, Steane, DA, Stock, WD, Potts, BM & Vaillancourt, RE 2013, Adaptation to climate in widespread eucalypt species, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Gold Coast, 86 pp. Acknowledgement This work was carried out with financial support from the Australian Government (Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) and the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF). The role of NCCARF is to lead the research community in a national interdisciplinary effort to generate the information needed by decision-makers in government, business and in vulnerable sectors and communities to manage the risk of climate change impacts. We thank the Reference Group for their engagement and advice in regard to the operation and effectiveness of this work undertaken in this project: Gary Howling (Great Eastern Ranges Initiative), David Freudenberger (Greening Australia), Neil Riches (WA State NRM), Richard Mazanec (DEC WA). We thank the following people for their generous assistance with this project: David Bush (CSIRO) for access and information on trials and E. tricarpa wild collection sites, Shane Lavell and Paul Turnbull (DSE Victoria) for access to trials and practical assistance with trial sampling, Martyn Lavery (Arianda Seed) for advice and sample collection at the wild E. tricarpa sites, Craig Macfarlane (CSIRO) for advice and practical assistance with leaf measurements, Paul Tilyard for assistance with genetic data analysis, Nat Raisbeck-Brown (CSIRO) for GIS, climate data and fieldwork, Gay Blake, Georg Wiehl and Didier Alanoix (DEC WA/CSIRO) for fieldwork and laboratory work, Anne Rick for information on E. salubris populations and field assistance. We thank two reviewers for comments on a draft of this report. Disclaimer The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of the Commonwealth or NCCARF, and neither the Commonwealth nor NCCARF accept responsibility for information or advice contained herein. Cover image © 2010 Tatiana Gerus TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................. 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .............................................................................................. 2 1. OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH ..................................................................... 4 2. RESEARCH ACTIVITIES AND METHODS ........................................................... 6 2.1 Eucalyptus tricarpa study sites ....................................................................... 6 2.2 Eucalyptus salubris study sites ....................................................................... 8 2.3 Climate and soil characteristics....................................................................... 9 2.4 Morphology and physiology measurements .................................................. 10 2.5 Molecular methods ....................................................................................... 11 2.5.1 Background .................................................................................................. 11 2.5.2 Method ......................................................................................................... 13 2.6 Statistical analysis ........................................................................................ 13 3. RESULTS AND OUTPUTS ................................................................................. 16 3.1 Results of Eucalyptus tricarpa study ............................................................. 16 3.1.1 Environmental variation along the gradient ................................................... 16 3.1.2 Morphology and physiology along the rainfall gradient .................................. 16 3.1.3 Variation among provenances in the common gardens ................................ 18 3.1.4 Growth rate of trees in the common gardens ................................................ 19 3.1.5 Genomic results ............................................................................................ 19 3.2 Results of Eucalyptus salubris study ............................................................. 32 3.2.1 Environmental variation along the gradient ................................................... 32 3.2.2 Morphology and physiology along the gradient ............................................. 32 3.2.3 Genomic results ............................................................................................ 36 4. DISCUSSION ...................................................................................................... 48 4.1 Functional responses to climate across the gradients ................................... 48 4.2 Genomic variation across the gradients ........................................................ 53 4.2.1 Evidence of adaptive genetic variation .......................................................... 53 4.2.2 Environmental indicators of genetic adaptation ............................................. 54 4.3 Implications for revegetation seed sourcing .................................................. 54 5. GAPS AND FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS ............................................... 58 6. REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 60 APPENDIX 1: CLIMATIC VARIABLES ...................................................................... 70 APPENDIX 2: STUDY SITE SOIL CHARACTERISTICS ........................................... 71 APPENDIX 3: ANUCLIM DRAFTSMAN PLOTS OF EUCALYPTUS TRICARPA CLIMATIC VARIABLES ............................................................................................. 73 APPENDIX 4: REGRESSION ANALYSIS OF THE ADAPTIVE GENETIC INDEX (CAP1) OF EUCALYPTUS TRICARPA AGAINST SOIL PROPERTIES. ................... 74 APPENDIX 5: ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE (ANOVA) OF PHYSIOLOGICAL/MORPHOMETRIC DATA IN WILD POPULATIONS AND FIELD TRIALS OF EUCALYPTUS TRICARPA. .................................................................... 75 APPENDIX 6: REGRESSION ANALYSIS OF PHYSIOLOGICAL/MORPHOMETRIC DATA IN WILD POPULATIONS OF EUCALYPTUS TRICARPA AGAINST THE ADAPTIVE GENETIC INDEX (CAP1). ....................................................................... 78 APPENDIX 7: REGRESSION ANALYSIS OF PHYSIOLOGICAL/MORPHOMETRIC DATA FROM EUCALYPTUS TRICARPA IN COMMON GARDEN FIELD TRIALS AT LAKE TYERS (WET TRIAL) AND HUNTLY (DRY TRIAL) AGAINST THE ADAPTIVE GENETIC INDEX (CAP1). .......................................................................................... 79 APPENDIX 8: REGRESSION ANALYSIS OF PLASTIC TRAIT DATA FROM EUCALYPTUS TRICARPA AGAINST THE ADAPTIVE GENETIC INDEX (CAP1). .. 81 APPENDIX 9: REGRESSION ANALYSIS OF THE ADAPTIVE GENETIC INDEX (CAP1) OF EUCALYPTUS TRICARPA AGAINST CLIMATIC VARIABLES. ............. 82 APPENDIX 10: ANUCLIM DRAFTSMAN PLOTS OF EUCALYPTUS SALUBRIS CLIMATIC VARIABLES ............................................................................................. 84 APPENDIX 11: REGRESSION ANALYSIS OF THE ADAPTIVE GENETIC INDEX (CAP1) OF EUCALYPTUS SALUBRIS LINEAGE 1 AGAINST CLIMATIC VARIABLES. .............................................................................................................. 85 List of Figures Figure 1: Locations of the nine study populations of Eucalyptus tricarpa (triangles), and the two common garden sites at Huntly (red circle) and Lake Tyers (blue circle) .......... 7 Figure 2: Locations of the nine study populations of Eucalyptus salubris ...................... 9 Figure 3: Relationships between functional traits of nine Eucalyptus tricarpa provenances and the mean annual precipitation (MAP) at their site of origin, when growing in two common gardens (at Huntly with 470 mm MAP, and at Lake Tyers with 840 mm MAP), and in their natural habitat (Wild) ........................................................ 17 Figure 4: Relationships between trait plasticity (relative trait range calculated from measurements taken from the two common gardens; RTR) of nine Eucalyptus tricarpa provenances, and the mean annual precipitation (MAP) at their site of origin ............. 20 Figure 5: Size of the sampled Eucalyptus tricarpa trees in the common gardens, 12 years after planting ..................................................................................................... 20 Figure 6: Principal Coordinates Analysis of Eucalyptus tricarpa DArTseq data ........... 21 Figure 7: Plot of CAP analysis