Primary and Secondary Metabolite Profiles of Lodgepole Pine Trees Change with Elevation, but Not with Latitude

Climate change has a large influence on plant functional and phenotypic traits including plant primary and secondary metabolites. One well-established approach to investigating the variation in plant metabolites involves studying plant populations along elevation and latitude gradients. We considered how two space-for-time climate change gradients (elevation and latitude) influence carbohydrate reserves (soluble sugars, starches) and secondary metabolites (monoterpenes, diterpene resin acids) of lodgepole pine trees in western Canada. We were particularly interested in the relationship of terpenes and carbohydrates with a wide range of tree, site, and climatic factors. We found that only elevation had a strong influence on the expression of both terpenes and carbohydrates of trees. Specifically, as elevation increased, concentrations of monoterpenes and diterpenes generally increased and soluble sugars (glucose, sucrose, total sugars) decreased. In contrast, latitude had no impact on either of terpenes or carbohydrates. Furthermore, we found a positive relationship between concentrations of starch and total terpenes and diterpenes in the elevation study; whereas neither starches nor sugars were correlated to terpenes in the latitude study. Similarly, both terpenes and carbohydrates had a much greater number of significant correlations to site characteristics such as slope, basal area index, and sand basal area, in the elevational than in the latitude study. Overall, these results support the conclusion that both biotic and abiotic factors likely drive the patterns of primary and secondary metabolite profiles of lodgepole pine along geographical gradients. Also, presence of a positive relationship between terpenes and starches suggests an interaction between primary ad secondary metabolites of lodgepole pine trees.