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ALTITUDINAL VARIATION IN HAWAIIAN METROSIDEROS
Author(s) -
Corn Carolyn A.,
Hiesey William M.
Publication year - 1973
Publication title -
american journal of botany
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.218
H-Index - 151
eISSN - 1537-2197
pISSN - 0002-9122
DOI - 10.1002/j.1537-2197.1973.tb06000.x
Subject(s) - edaphic , biology , biological dispersal , ecology , altitude (triangle) , precipitation , geography , population , soil water , demography , geometry , mathematics , sociology , meteorology
Hawaiian Metrosideros is a highly polymorphic complex that is distributed throughout the six major islands of the Hawaiian Island chain from tropical climates near sea level to altitudes up to 8,500 ft with frost. Its populations extend continuously over many areas with average annual precipitation ranging from 30 to 450 in. and with diverse edaphic and topographical features. The Hawaiian forms are probably all derived from one or a very small number of ancestral introductions that arrived within the last 20 million years by longdistance dispersal. Seeds collected from diverse altitudinal sites on the islands of Hawaii and Maui and grown under uniform greenhouse conditions at Honolulu show evidence of ecotypic differentiation along altitudinal gradients. Seedlings from these islands separated by 50 miles of ocean show parallelism in their altitudinal differentiation in plant height and leaf size, but with strongly overlapping variation from site to site.