Plant response to climate change: Herbarium can act as a tool for future research on plant-climate interactions
Abstract
Understanding of plant response to the changing environmental conditions are of central importance for biodiversity conservation. In this study, we evaluated the temporal changes in leaf morphological traits using herbarium specimens. We found temporal changes mainly in 3 parameters of leaf morphological traits (i.e. leaf area, leaf length and leaf shape) of the grasses except leaf width. The increase in leaf area was correlated with the average atmospheric CO2 concentration of the year in which a particular species was collected. In conclusion, we found that plants are already responding to changing environmental conditions that evidently observed in the herbarium specimens. Therefore, herbarium can prove to be a good tool to understand plant-climate interactions in future studies.
This research poster has been awarded Third Prize. Abhishek Kumar acknowledges his colleagues and co-authors for support and constructive suggestions during the research work.
Abhishek Kumar
Senior Research Fellow
My research interests include plant ecology, restoration ecology and soil ecology.