Coastal Plant Species Response to Salinity Stress
Open AccessSpecies-specific variation in response to stress is a key driver of patterns in community composition and ecosystem function. As climate change alters stress regimes, coastal plant communities must respond to elevated salinity due to the press stressor of sea level rise, in addition to the pulse stressor of more intense storms. Our study investigates the effects of presses and pulses of salinity stress on five glycophytic and five halophytic species to determine whether salinity intensity, duration, or their interaction best explain patterns in survival and performance. In a greenhouse salinity stress exposure experiment, salinity intensity best explained patterns of survival in glycophytic species, while the interaction between intensity and duration best explained survival in halophytic species. The interaction between intensity and duration also best explained biomass and chlorophyll production for glycophytic and halophytic species. There was interspecies variability in the magnitude of this interaction, with some species having a more pronounced interaction in biomass response (glycophytes Persicaria maculosa, Sorghum bicolor and Glycine max) and chlorophyll response (halophytes Phragmites australis and Kosteletzkya virginica). In leaf chlorophyll concentration, there were two distinct patterns in the interaction of salinity intensity and duration: for the majority of species, as duration increased, the effect of intensity on biomass became more negative, while for P. australis and K. virginica, the effect of intensity on chlorophyll became more positive with increasing duration, indicating a compensatory response. The slope of the effect of salinity intensity on biomass at the highest duration (i.e. as a press stressor) was used to quantify and rank salinity tolerance. Using this indicator, species salinity tolerance levels matched those in the literature. In conclusion, by measuring species-specific response patterns to stress exposure, we were able to visualize the independent and interactive effects of salinity stress intensity and duration and found that these interactions varied by species type and in magnitude.
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