Investigating the ontogenetic shift of wood anatomical traits from seedlings to mature trees
– Hanna Hickey, Julie Messier, Angela Prendin (University of Waterloo)
The wood of trees serves many important functions influencing fitness; it provides mechanical support, transports water via hydraulic conduits, and stores water and essential compounds such as carbohydrates and secondary metabolites. Due to these multiple functions, there are competing demands on wood anatomy raising a question about how trees adapt to optimize these functions under differing ecological conditions. By studying wood trait variation within species, the effect of genetics is mitigated, and the effect of ontogeny can be isolated by controlling for environmental factors. Ontogeny has a large effect on the trajectory of wood trait variation in trees due to the age of cambium cells and the differences in mechanical and hydraulic demands of small and large trees. This project will investigate the role of ontogeny in determining the variation and covariation of ten wood anatomical traits across three plant development stages (seedling, sapling, and mature tree) in three temperate angiosperm species (flowering plants).
