Common garden study reveals frost-tolerant, generalist northern seed sources are best suited to expand range of Quercus rubra
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Climate change is shifting the potential suitable range of northern red oak (Quercus rubra L.) faster than it can migrate, creating an adaptation lag. Quercus rubra is prominent in eastern North American forests and important for its carbon sequestration, ecological roles, and economic significance. Our study addresses which populations of Q. rubra are best suited for climatic conditions at the northern and central range limits. Our findings can inform forestry management policies such as assisted migration, where species are transferred within their native range to mitigate the effects of climate change. We planted over 800 Q. rubra seedlings from twelve populations across the current Q. rubra geographic range in two common gardens, one at the northern range limit (Alberta, Michigan) and one in the central range (Kalamazoo, Michigan). We observed Q. rubra aboveground biomass growth, phenology (senescence, budburst), and frost damage for three years. We also measured photosynthetic capacity, stress response, photosynthetic temperature response and water use efficiency to understand the physiological limits of the populations and how they responded to the environmental conditions of the common garden. Southern seed source populations, those from warmer and wetter locations, showed greater growth increments in all years. However, southern seed sources generally had later phenological events which, coupled with their acquisitive growth strategy, resulted in them sustaining more frost damage than northern seed source populations. Northern seed sources, from colder and drier locations, had earlier budburst and were able to utilize early growing season snow melt and higher solar radiation. Northern seed sources also senesced earlier, avoiding autumn frosts. While southern seed sources accumulated more aboveground biomass, it was a trade off with greater evidence of frost damage. Northern populations also seemed to have a more conservative, generalist strategy for physiology. Northern populations had higher leaf mass per area, foliar leaf nitrogen, and photosynthetic capacity. They also had a wider photosynthetic temperature range compared to southern seed sources. More extreme weather events are predicted with climate change, which favors the more conservative generalist strategy and greater frost tolerance of northern seed sources for assisted migration at the northern range limit.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".