Meeting Abstract
Though plant leaves are critically important to plant survival, leaf traits are highly variable in many characters, including blade shape, size, margin, and pubescence. Our study aims to expand our understanding of leaf trait evolution by taking a holistic view of the environmental, functional, and genetic pressures influencing leaf traits. We explore this using replicated evolution for leaf syndromes in Mexican Viburnum, where species with large, pubescent, toothy (LPT) or small, glabrous, entire (SGE) leaf syndromes have arisen independently multiple times. We characterized microhabitat for individuals with different leaf syndromes at 17 sites in Mexico. We found that though our species with SGE leaves occupied similar environments, our LPT species occupied divergent environments with respect to moisture. The LPT species also showed divergence in their ability to repel water when we measured leaf surface wettability. We also investigated genotypic and phenotypic leaf trait accessibility in a SGE by LPT hybrid swarm and found that in a well genetically admixed population we observed many leaf phenotypes outside of the parental syndromes. This suggests certain combinations of leaf traits could be genetically available in Viburnum but are selected against.
